Test Drive

[snowblindmods]

TEST DRIVE MEME

If you'd like to apply to Snowblind and would like to test the waters first or get a sample set up for your application, this meme is for you! We've even provided some prompts for you to use if you want (but feel free to make up your own). Here's how it works. ✭ Reply to this entry with a character you're considering apping into the game. You can include the name of your character and the fandom in your subject line. ✭ Comment around to others on the meme, whether you're in the game already or not. ✭ Now you have a sample ready for your application! ✭ So go reserve and apply when reservations and applications are open. ✭ Seriously, do it. Network Prompts ONE: THE THINGS THAT CRAWL IN THE NIGHT You haven't thought about the spiders that roam Norfinbury in awhile. But then something happens one night. It's after lockdown and you're all alone, but you can't sleep. How can you, when every time you try to drift off you hear the sounds of scurrying little legs? The sound gets louder, it multiplies, until its all around you. But where--where? Maybe they bugs are beneath the wallpaper, maybe they're under the floorboards. Maybe they're in the furniture. Or maybe, maybe they're just in your head. The tablet is the only thing you have to turn to. Even if you're the only one experiencing these sounds, maybe someone can talk you down, convince you that it's just a brief episode of paranoia that you can unwind from. TWO: IT WAS ONLY JUST A DREAM You wake up late into the night. You dreamed you were crawling through a tight, closed space, your body scraping against the metal, and know you don't belong here. Where are you going? The vent is dark, and you don't have your tablet with you. You think there's someone behind you, but you can't be sure. You pull yourself forward with one of your arms. And then you pull yourself forward with your other arm. And then you pull yourself forward with a third--one you shouldn't have. One that doesn't even belong to you. Once your eyes are open you can still feel those extra limbs extending outward from your body, thin spider legs grabbing at air, clawing for purchase--but then the feeling passes. You're just you, and now you can't get back to sleep. Maybe someone else had the same dream? Action Prompts THREE: RATE YOUR DISCOMFORT You and your traveling companion have found an easy routine. Travel, search, hunker down, try to find a semblance of warmth and comfort for the night before you sleep and start all over again. You don't question when they offer you the last of the fresh fruit from your last run to the grocery store. It's a kind gesture, and perhaps you intend to return it the next chance you get. But the food sits uncomfortably in your stomach. You can feel it, can't you? It's not churning inside of you but moving, squirming, crawling. Nothing relieves it. It doesn't hurt but you feel sick, you find yourself shuddering, but when you show your companion your shaking hands they don't seem to notice the way that your skin ripples with something unseen just underneath. Whatever you ate isn't just in your stomach. It's inside. You can feel it tickling up your throat, reaching up up up. FOUR: IT SLEEPS BENEATH THE SNOW You're almost there: the building is just ahead of you, and just in time for lockdown. The coast is clear...at least, that's what you think before the ground around the building begins to move. The snow shifts, snaking in a wide, giant circle around it. And then the monster reveals itself, snow falling from its hardened exoskeleton in chunks, a giant centipede-like anomaly with too-human eyes and hundreds of legs like stilettos decorated with razor blades. It has you and your traveling companion in your sights--you're going to have to think faster than it can reach you if you want to get around it and into the house before the door locks and dooms the both of you.

Comments

Mary Morstan-Watson | BBC Sherlock

[agravating]

[Two]

@memorstan; voice

[Her voice is quiet, deceptively calm, low. Those that know her may hear the tightness, the just audible concern as she speaks, carefully soft and slow.] I don't suppose anyone else is still up?

[Three]

[Still hands, steady nerves, being at the top of her game--all are requirements of her profession. But her hands are shaking, something prickles under her skin, unnatural and unnerving. Something is crawling, from her fingers and up her arm, tip-toeing across her chest, skittering down her spine and all the way to her toes. She feels sick, her heart fluttering in her chest. Something is climbing up her throat, and she can barely breathe for it.

Brown eyes look up, holding both hands in front of her. They shake. She shivers, the way she had when nausea had kept her awake all hours of the night.]

I think I'm going to get settled early.

[Four]

[It takes just a second, just a moment for her to process. Then she turns, reaches for her traveling partner's hand, and grabs it tightly, breaking into a sprint.]

Run! I have an idea!

@jwatson; voice

[jumpthegun]

[John jumps immediately to this. He's been trying to get to Mary and been keeping a close watch on her network presence.]

Yeah, I'm up.

[He's always up.]

What's wrong?

[agravating]

[jwatson, and it was so easy to find her husband on the network. Not relevant now. Mary still feels the ghost of extra limbs crawling through space, and she is so wholly unused to not being in possession of her faculties. Exhale, inhale. Smile, John Watson can hear it.] Can't sleep is all. Thought I'd see if anyone else was up too.

[The smile spreads, and she laughs in spite of herself for her own insecurity.] It did take you a long time to ring after our first date, John.

[jumpthegun]

I had to think of something cool to say.

[There's an earnestness in his tone that's always there for her now. This is his second chance... third, if you count their months-long silence after discovering Mary's true identity. Maybe even fourth with her globe-trotting adventures after Sherlock had found the second AGRA data stick.]

This place is murder on the regular eight hours. [So is a baby... so is Sherlock Holmes.] Want to tell me about the house you're in for the night?

[agravating]

You're not going to tell me about all the snow being cool enough to get you off having to find something now, are you? "Yeah, I'm up" and that's it? I thought the great blogger Dr. Watson would have something more...exciting.

[The old bench she's on creaks as she leans back, her head on her pack.]

I never got that eight hours before you. Not going to get it in a rubbish shack of a house here. [Looking up at the ceiling, she sighs.] Isn't much, really. Bit of old furniture, tired wood, locked up tight the instant lockdown hit. Not particularly cozy, but better than the alternative.

[jumpthegun]

Well, if you want exciting, I could tell you about the time we ran into an anomaly that was playing the Bee Gees. Not something I was expecting, really. [It had also moved like Moriarty and its head had exploded... those are much less amusing facts related to it.]

Anyway, 'old furniture, tired wood,' what are you calling me the great blogger for? You're practically a poet. I can really feel myself there. [He's teasing. Always teasing. It's so much easier than talking about anything consequential. Those things need to wait for when they're together.]

[agravating]

I would much prefer not hearing about you running into anomalies at all, my love. I did read the survival guide.

[She chuckles, soft. Hollow.] I don't suppose it's so familiar because most buildings here look the same, by any chance? There's no chance I have a future in blogging, John.

[jumpthegun]

How about the time I tried to have a talking dog play interpreter for a phantom dog in a firehouse?

[It sounds insane, but he's really not making it up, he promises! Even a hollow chuckle is something, at least. She's always been good at hiding what she's thinking, though. John isn't really sure how to take it, just at the moment, other than at face value.]

I dunno. You seem to be good at mid-life career shifts. [Oh. John clamps down. That was... bad. He hadn't meant it to be a dig, but it is, an old resentment wrapped up and held there in the back of his mind, waiting to come out.

She's here. She's here and she's alive and she's real. It doesn't matter what came before. John clears his throat.]

That's about how most of them look, yeah. Some are nicer than others. A few have even got hot water. There's a precious thing.

@featherydouche; voice; option two

[mrcreamsicles]

[The voice of a decidedly American teenager answers her.]

'Sup. Can't sleep?

[It is late, and he's never been one for sleeping well here.]

[agravating]

Can't sleep.

[Mary sighs.] Can't sleep yourself? It's very late for you to be up.

[mrcreamsicles]

[Oh, is that how she's playing it?]

Chalk it up to time zones. While your internal clock is telling you go the fuck to sleep, mine's saying the early bird gets the worm. Unless I'm secretly a night owl. Want to take a guess?

[He does a terrible owl hoot impression. Wrong vocal cords (and taxonomic order) for it.]

[agravating]

Hmm. I've seen your name in the network going far back. You've been here a while. So I suppose that while your impression of an owl is enough to send one running--rather, flying--for cover, you are a night owl.

[Clearing her throat, she adds:] Perhaps you had a similar unsettling dream. Either or, really.

[mrcreamsicles]

Longer than you, yeah, but you must not have actually listened much.

[He caws this time, spot on accuracy for an American crow.]

No dreams tonight because I haven't been to sleep yet. Call it Norfinbury's unique brand of insomnia: this house is cold as balls and the wind keeps making the roof creak. I go to lay down and next thing it sounds like the ceiling's going to cave in. Doesn't lend well to my beauty sleep.

What was the dream?

[agravating]

Didn't say I listened.

[She rests her chin in her hand, sighing quietly.] Sounds about right, really. You know balls aren't typically cold, right?

Dreamt I was in a vent, trying to get away from something. First right, then left, then another arm altogether, one which shouldn't exist at all. Like a spider crawling down a net towards prey. Except, you know. I'm not a spider last I checked...

[mrcreamsicles]

Lady, I think everyone's balls are cold here. Even people who don't have them have a quantum pair just to feel this ridiculous chill.

[Norfinbury is terrible and he misses being somewhere with a furnace.]

[Luckily, he drops the subject there.]

... Think I might just stay up tonight. I'd pin it down to a regular brand nightmare, but the thing is we've got vent spiders. Mechanical ones.

Four

[ecks]

[Ecks remembers how this goes. If it occurred to her to be amused at irony, she might make a comment about the other time she encountered an anomaly while traveling with a Watson. They're too far from other shelter to flee to another house, and she's already thinking how last time it didn't hurt at all to die.

She's surprised by the command, but it's exactly what she needs -- there's no hesitation as she leaps into motion to obey, mittened hand grasping Mary's in return.]

[agravating]

[Gripping Ecks' hand tightly, Mary bolts towards the centipede-like anomaly. There isn't a lot of space, not between the razor-sharp legs, but the length of the creature gives them an advantage. A slim one, but Mary Watson isn't picky.

Her grip only gets tighter when they get closer to the anomaly. She pulls Ecks closer to her, eyes narrowed. Timing had to be right, just right.] We're sliding under the fellow. Best shot we've got of getting past him, I think. Unless you've another idea--which you better tell me now.

[She talks fast, her eyes leaving the anomaly only once to look at Ecks. There's only a few seconds for the golem to speak her protest, otherwise Mary is about to try and slide past the anomaly's legs to get to that house.]

[ecks]

Nuh-uh!

[It's maybe a statement of feeling about the plan, maybe a denial that she has any other ideas. Despite the vehemence of the verbal negative, Ecks nods, squeezing Mary's hand back as they run, preparing to follow her lead.]

Most bullshit plan ever and I'm sorry

[agravating]

Right then. [Just a bit closer, then she pulls Ecks close to her and falls to the ground, sliding in the snow. They are dangerously close to the anomaly's appendages, Mary holding the girl close enough to her to try and shield her from the razor-sharp limbs.

They don't slide far and they don't need to. Gasping a quick breath of air, she's back to her feet and still holding Ecks close to her, tugging as she runs for the door.]

Almost-- Going to have to block the door when we get in, so it can't follow us.

[Not that it couldn't smash the door in but she's hoping that lockdown, which keeps them in, can also keep the anomaly out.]

hey, my plan in another thread was 'run back and forth'

[ecks]

[Under the visceral fear of being cut to ribbons by the creature's razor legs is the knowledge that reality is better and worse -- to touch it is to sleep, which does not hurt, but which is a certain death.

She threads the needle with Mary, stumbling to her feet, her breathing loud in her own ears.]

Move the furniture.

[She's already thinking ahead with you, Mary. Her voice might seem weirdly calm through her ragged breathing. Behind them, the creature lets out a roar as its head turns, doubling around to crawl over its own body after them.]

Good, very good

[agravating]

[She's not old, she just isn't young anymore. Mary stretches her hand to grapple for the doorknob and flings it open, pushing Ecks in before her. When they're both inside she slams the door shut, dropping her pack immediately and moving towards the first large piece of furniture she can find--the dilapidated sofa. It's heavy but movable, and she starts shoving it towards the door, careful not to smush Ecks' toes.]

Stay back. [Her breathing is hard as she throws her weight against the sofa, moving it as quickly as she can.] One body away from where it is makes it harder for it to track us, right?

[ecks]

[Ecks moves to help, but the command has her halting. She doesn't know if that's true.]

It saw us. It already saw us.

[She shakes off the urge to obey and grabs at an armchair to push it, too, in the direction of the door.]

@309_W1C_2DZ; text

[howdull]

[It still hurts to see her around, to know what mistakes he has made when it comes to her. He's almost afraid to talk to her, or around her, in case he gets her hurt again. But he's not going to ignore a late night distress call, even if she doesn't phrase it as such.]

Yes, I am.

@memorstan, text

[agravating]

Morning, Sherlock. Almost didn't recognize your text. It isn't signed, you know.

[She hurt them. She hurt them irreparably by stepping in the way of that bullet. But she knew, she'd seen. John Watson could survive without her, but he couldn't live without Sherlock Holmes.

She had hurt them, but she'd made the right choice.]

I hope you've been taking good care of my husband.

[howdull]

[He's got out of the habit of signing his texts here, it's a different sort of system than real texting, more like twitter.

She couldn't have said anything more guaranteed to hurt. Intentional? Possible, she was always smart.]

You should know by now, care is not my particular area of expertise.