assguardians | THE TEST-DRIVE MEME

Entry tags:

!test drive meme

THE TEST-DRIVE MEME

THE TEST DRIVE MEME
Asgard is fast approaching endgame, but brand new characters and reclaims are just as welcome as ever!

• Thinking about apping a new character (or reclaiming an old one) for endgame? Put them here!
• Threads here can count as your third person sample!
• Comment with your character's name and canon!
• This is open to everyone! Also, test drivers can tag other test drivers. :)
• Make up your own scenario or have them walk into all the doors or leave it blank for others to do it for you!

Reserves and applications are always open!

OPTIONAL SCENARIO: After your character receives his or her bracelet and the run-down from the faceless maids in the castle, they walk out to see the city celebrating an autumn apple festival. The weather is crisp but clear and the foliage a brilliant cascade of reds, browns, and golds. Children play games with chalk in the streets, and vendors are set up selling every sort of apple treat imaginable (and will happily offer samples if your character looks interested enough!) All of the natives seem vaguely tired, but cheerful, and some will try to entice your character into bobbing for apples or facepainting at stations set up at sidewalk intersections.

Make sure to have fun, and as always, feel free to hit the mods or players up with any questions you might have! ♥

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Odin, it made sense, she had read quite a lot about him. Elizabeth was going over everything in her head that she could recall of the myths she had read in her library, including his family tree and the legends of the world tree. She was watching where she was going, but she was also playing with her new bracelet and glancing at the letter too. It was so much to take in, and it all seemed some fantastic dream. More than anything she was excited that she had gotten out of her tower. Everything else, Elizabeth thought, she could figure out as she went along. It all seemed so dangerous and fortuitous at once.

She rounded a corner nearly stepping into a man surrounded in a cloud of smoke. Elizabeth coughed and wafted her hand to get the smoke out of her face, squinting as she stared up at him. "You smell awful." That was rude, Elizabeth thought, and went to correct herself. "That smoke smells awful, is what I should have said. Is that tobacco?" It was something she had read about but never seen for herself.

Booker's head jerked back gently at the insult and the girl's quick fix(?) didn't have him any more impressed with this run in. But it wasn't something that was untrue and Booker had a charming affair with brutal honesty that made awkward situations like this all the more hearty.

"No, you had it right the first time." He shrugged before taking another drag from the cigarette--which then had him recognizing her inquiry for what it was: Is that tobacco? The girl didn't look like a grey-faced citizen of Asgard and her question was all the more bizarre with the thought that she, like him, must have come from the outside world.

"Yeah, sure is." He then narrowed his eyes and slipped his left hand inside his vest, fishing out the photograph he had recently obtained and took a look at it--and so much as held it up to her face and compared and contrasted. "Say, miss.." He lowered the photograph and turned it over for her to look at. "Recognize this girl?" The photograph came from an odd couple just before he embarked on a magical elevator ride into the heavens. Boy, he missed his mark.

Ended up in this place, not Columbia. Booker took another drag. This was starting too feel a little too convenient.

"Oh?" Elizabeth smiled at the opportunity to be of some use to the stranger. One hand come up push aside some of her hair before she moved so that she was standing more to his side rather than in front of him. "Let me see."

She leaned forward and placed her fingers lightly on the edge of the photograph, stared for just a second, and then quickly jerked her head up to stare up into the man's eyes. "Where did you get this?" Fear asserted itself immediately into her mind and Elizabeth took a step back, removing her hand from the photograph's edge as she took another, and then another step away from him. This man could be one of the scientists, or hired from them.

Elizabeth gave him a wary expression, distrustful and wary. "Who are you?"

"Huh." Booker slipped the photograph into his vest pocket. It was a terrible photo of her, especially compared to seeing her in person. "Elizabeth," but it was enough to reveal her to him. "Well, I came to save you from your iron cage but looks like you were let out.." He brought his now free hand to scratch gently at his chin and he shifted his weight, "If it's all the same to you, Elizabeth, I don't reckon it matters anymore who I am.. and what I intended." They weren't on Columbia and Booker wasn't dumb enough to think he had any sort of control of escaping this place with a girl in tow. If it were as simple as taking the next elevator-chair-thing down to earth he might be tempted.

But his debt wasn't going to be answered for here, no point in trying.

"Save... save me?" She shook her head, her arms coming up to rest against her, hands in front of her chest. Elizabeth idly fiddled with the new bracelet on her wrist. "If you please, it matters very much to me. Why? Why you, why now? Why were you coming to save me? Do you know my parents?"

Without her conscious choice to, her fingers slid down to play with the thimble covering her truncated pinky. It was a nervous habit she had developed a long time ago. "You have my picture, I think I deserve at least some explanation of what your intentions were. What is your name? You already know mine."

It might be that he could no longer fulfill his duty but it mattered to her why he had that duty and what he might mean to her now, and if he had anything to do with these current events. Elizabeth had often been curious about her parents and what life in Columbia was like outside of her tower. This man was her key to unlocking those doors, surely.

Booker exhaled smoke through his nose, the cigarette lowered to his side and he gave it a small tap so that a hat of ash fell from it and settled on the ground beside his foot. "Look, miss.. I was doing a job.. someone said you needed some saving and I headed up to a place called Columbia to do it and before I know it.. I'm here. From what I can tell you and I are a long ways from our homes.. our lives.. best be stepping to this new tune now maybe even find some hooch to help us cope." He huffed through his nostrils, feeling awkward and unfulfilled as the answer to his debt was standing before him yet their meeting all but pointless now.

It was just another lead that had him up against the great big wall of disappointment. How many cases had he taken with leads guiding him to that unforgiving brick wall. The only thing standing between him and success was that barrier of bitter mockery.

The irony was a heavy razz to his mood and he needed some spirits to lift him back up about now.

But this girl, he didn't know what she was wanted for or what he was saving her from-- now the only thing he could imagine saving her from was himself, that thought had him snort. "Booker DeWitt." Best not get involved, it wasn't in his control anymore. But this new world, hell, maybe that meant he was debt free? Until people he owed showed up here.

There seemed to her a lot missing from his story, and Elizabeth wanted to ask another dozen questions as they popped into her head before he even finished speaking. She at least lowered her hands and held them behind her, though her fingers went right back to spinning the thimble around even if it was out of the man's line of sight now. Hearing his name made her feel slightly better, maybe if only that was one definitive answer.

"Mr. DeWitt, I--" Elizabeth blinked up at him. "Did you say hooch?" She looked down and away, expression thoughtful as she tried to recall what that word meant. She knew she had read it somewhere but she couldn't recall and she shook her head. "That is liquor, isn't it?"

Then she unclasped her hands from behind her and waved one dismissively. "Nevermind. What I would really like to know is, who hired you? And why did they want me?"

Booker's brows furrowed and his eyes narrowed at her as she pushed further for information. As he had made peace with the circumstances at hand she kept pulling at the scabs of his bleeding situation. Hell, he didn't want to think about how this intervened with his plans of being debt free--but what else could he do here? Other than smoke and get drunk?

It was abundantly clear that his life mattered even less here than what his life was worth back in New York. He had nothing but a measly two or three measly silver dollars to his name and a five o'clock shadow--and he really couldn't count the dollars as it was already spent somewhere losing what integrity he had left.

The peace he had made with the situation was merely the fact that he avoided the debt collectors splendidly -- skipping worlds, hell, universes maybe? He'd like to see the cab fare for the trouble! Maybe Hel would pay off his debt for him, being as the importance of existing here was much more emphasized than any of his life choices back in his world. Maybe he'd be more upset about this uprooting had his life meant something more important.

So, he might have avoided answering her for a moment and when he did it wouldn't be what she wanted. "I find lost people and I bring them together with those who were looking for them.. you'd have to get the particulars from them. Can't say I know them more than that." And if he did, what did it matter? But if he were in her shoes he'd imagine it would matter to him so he did offer: "Sorry, I can't be more of help. Elizabeth." Now..

About that hooch.

His answer had her quiet and thoughtful. Elizabeth stared up at him and with some good intentioned effort on her part, she reached forward and rested her hand on his arm. Likely it meant little to him, she expected people touched each other in these ways constantly in normal everyday life. For her, it was a luxury and a gift to be able to touch someone so casually, and gently. "I have a great deal of more questions for you, if you will be patient with me, Mr. DeWitt. I understand that you may not know the particulars but surely you understand my situation."

Elizabeth assumed that he knew all about her and her life, she assumed everyone in Columbia did. Although, as she thought of that Elizabeth wondered if maybe he didn't at all. Maybe, as he said, it didn't much matter now. "Or maybe you don't. Regardless I will not bombard you with them for the moment. For now, I would like to see what the out-of-doors is all about. Will you be my escort?" Elizabeth gave him a hopeful smile.

No, Booker thought, he could not understand her situation and he felt a great apprehension to trying to. What common ground could they find to relate to one another with words that would resonate understanding? She obviously was important, someone who would pay a great deal of money for, someone who people would hire a guy like him to find.

That kind of desperation was not at all unnoticed. He didn't come recommended by his tactics or morals, he came recommended with his efficiency at all costs.

Or maybe you don't... She was smart. Until she asked him to be her escort. Didn't a young woman like herself know better to get mixed up with guys like him? The kind of hire that went outside of the law and blessings of the majority. Surely he was stealing her from a great many for the great few. Otherwise the people surrounding her would let her slip through their fingers to those who wanted her more desperately.

But that did bring up the question: What is it about this girl that people held onto her with iron cages shaped like angels? He had seen a great many situations and infiltrating a selected population meant he was getting into something else to carry to the grave. An ugly mess that people with morals would perish at the filthy business of it. Good thing his soul was already tarnished beyond purity. Nothing would be ruined here.

Except her. "I wouldn't know where to .. take you." He looked from her pretty to glance around them before taking a drag from the cigarette. "Are you hungry?" He then looked back to her and gestured ahead, it was a road and a road as good as any. Maybe they'll find something to eat on the way.

"That's the fun of it, then! Neither of us knows where anything is, here." Elizabeth would have been lost in Columbia, trying to get from floating section of city to the next section, whereas someone like him from Columbia...

Wait, that wasn't right. Booker had said he had come up to Columbia to get her. It was such a mystery and her upbringing meant that mystery was niggling at her terribly. But like she had just considered, maybe none of that even mattered now. This was a fresh start, and Elizabeth honestly could not say that she would miss having her powers here. There would be no scientists poking, prodding, or hooking her up to machines here.

Elizabeth became excited again, to even greater heights than she had when she first found herself somewhere other than her few small set of rooms in the tower she had grown up in. "Oh, Mr. DeWitt! I'm not hungry at all, but I feel like I would love to try everything that people here eat!" With that, Elizabeth moved toward the direction he had gestured in only she was tugging on his shirt sleeve, laughing, and trying to skip away with him in tow.

He hadn't really thought about how this introduction would have gone--had he found Elizabeth in Columbia. Only that he had to snag her and run like hell out of there before either of them got shot. The floating city of Columbia, a pure and righteous place, the mechanics of science and magic or whatever nonsense they used to keep the buildings up and up. The only thing he felt for Columbia was a real fear of the city flying overhead and Columbia's shit raining down on him--literally or figuratively. He had enough to deal with in New York without some damn city in the clouds making his life any harder with haughty judgements causing conflict in the space between heaven and earth.

However, here Elizabeth was never minding his earth-dwelling unfortunate background and seeking for some company while they discover this tree--house of a home. Damn, he needed to really look over that Loki made explanation again. It was just all really overwhelming that subtle technical facts such as exactly what earth they were on seemed to go one ear and out the other.

Once he was past this initial shock he might absorb more of the information offered to him. Such as this bracelet around his wrist that made him think twice about hacking up his sleeve.

Booker took a hesitant step forward, his eyes mostly on her and the swing of her hair beneath that fat bow and all he could think to respond with was: "I'd stay away from whatever has the natives turning grey." His eyes then looked ahead as he fell into some awkward pace behind her at the command of her tug to his sleeve.

"Call me .. Booker." He watched her hand jerking at his sleeve but he was only going so fast and was not all together motivated to jog ahead just yet. Usually he reserved his energy for running when someone was chasing him. Or he was chasing them, whatever came first.

Booker. It was a nice name, she thought, though calling him that seemed far too personal for having only just met. Elizabeth smiled politely up at him, looking his face, neck, shirt and vest over with some interest before her gaze was ahead once again. "Were you on your way to find something to eat before we met?" Elizabeth asked him.

She had finally let go of his sleeve, though she remained close by. Before Booker had much of a chance to answer Elizabeth was speaking again. "What a coincidence, don't you think? Or perhaps not. Still, I feel glad I think that we have met. We were supposed to have met, it would seem." Elizabeth turned her smile up at him again. "Don't you think?"

The left side of Booker's mouth pursed and the corner of his lips dimpled into a curious curve. He looked to the deep blue of her pretty-shaped eyes and considered her theory-feeling-nonsense. Booker wasn't sure if this place had much to do with fate rather than the fact that it could have been a massive draft that had him, her, and a whole lot of other Columbians and New Yorkers. A troubling thought to his previous relief that perhaps his debt collectors wouldn't come for him.

But being here, they surely wouldn't care right? It's a clean slate. Sure.

He took in a deep breath through his nostrils, a brow rose, and he answered with: "I guess we could think of it like that." He had her picture, she had the value, he was coming for her, but it was she that found him. Booker looked to his cigarette and flicked it away before that hand went to his hip. He wasn't sure how much he believed in designed destiny. But then again, these were gods.

"Might be that you're right."

"Might be, might'n not." It was a curious exercise of the mind and of theories of predestination. Elizabeth was more quiet as they walked side by side and while she was looking all around with an excited curiosity, her eyes would inevitably always come back to the gentleman (as she saw him) by her side. As they approached a busier section of street, Elizabeth lifted her hand up to lightly hold at the inside of his elbow. In novels the women sometimes did that and it seemed like something she would like to do, and it turned out that she did.

"You were coming to save me," Elizabeth said once she finally spoke up again. "How were you going to do it? My tower was so tall-- and how were you ever going to get past Songbird? I have seen him get angry, it's not something the faint of heart could ever face." Which made her estimation of him rise considerably as she thought of it.

Songbird? Booker had a frown to his lips and he turned his head slightly to look at the girl. "Getting up to Columbia was less trouble than I thought it would have been." Everyone knew about the floating city in the heavens, but no one really knew the process of getting up there. Hot air balloons, Zeppelins, a wing or two and a prayer--it was anyone's guess, besides the elite that got the invitation, or money, to get there. It never interested Booker and with the people he usually dealt with there wasn't much interest in conversation for Columbia.

"Well, s'pose I could feed the bird a cracker and use the stairs?" He wasn't ignorant to the fact that she had snaked her arm in link with his own. He had tensed at the touch, and was slowly working on relaxing with it. He didn't usually socialize well with women, but he wasn't all together dumb on how to. However, he was glad she took the lead in this interaction--he was out of practice how to behave with good company.

It had to be humor, Elizabeth assumed, so she laughed softly. The thought of someone trying to feed Songbird a cracker was laughable in itself, and she ended up giving another, louder laugh. "Who knows, maybe that would work? As much research as I had tried to educate myself with regarding Songbird, his make and programming remains a mystery to me. I have wondered if there are other books, out in the world, not available in my library that would aid me in that. When I was younger I had fantasies of overwriting his programming to get past him. Obviously, that never worked out for me."

Elizabeth smiled up at the mysterious stranger, feeling glad and happy that he hadn't rejected her hand on the inside of her arm to stay closer to him. The crowds of people didn't scare her but neither did she wanted to get separated. Like this whole experience, Booker was entirely new to her and being able to socialize was as thrilling as was walking freely down a street.

She was looking all around them again, and she gave a shake of her head. "This is so surreal for me, Mr. DeWitt. To think, I could go anywhere I want, do anything I please? It's almost overwhelming."

Booker was losing her as she spoke more about the bird. It started with Songbird's make and programming--after that he was lost. He thought they all pretty much knew where the birds (and bees) came from, but this girl was speaking like she came from another world. Overwriting his programming-- Fantasies of overwriting nature? Just what the hell kind of tower did she really come from!

"Uhhh.." His intellectual response was soon hushed with a few more words from her. By the end of it Booker was sure he wasn't blinking in unison. She had some extraordinary ideas, more than he'd ever heard a woman speak before in such a short of time knowing one! Not to say he didn't know women who had their own ideas such as promoting prohibition, bettering the world with unparalleled education, working in masculated fields. To each their own really, but the audacity to reprogram a song bird?

That was a whole higher level of ideals that he wasn't sure was even worth the effort in thinking about. But, alas, she had deviated from the conversation about how to remake the egg that the bird hatches from. In that, again, he was glad to be led in a direction -- different as he was accustomed to.

"Well.." Booker wasn't too much for words and even less when he wasn't quite sure what to say. He could relate her feelings to oppressed women he's had the pleasure, or grievance, to listen to. The world wasn't as gentle as a woman was, it was hard, edgy, cruel, and indifferent if nothing else. Least he thought so anyway. "You .. sure can." He blinked away awkwardly.

Hooch.

"Look at that!" Elizabeth gasped and pointed up at a large tree that came into view in the distance, over the tops of the narrow rows of shops and houses they were walking through. "Mr. DeWitt, let's go look!" She laughed happily and pulled on his arm a moment before she let go and was off skipping forward along the street to try and find the large tree.

She zigged and zagged through the people in the street, took a second to marvel at a bicycle leaning up against a house, then disappeared around the corner. "Oh look!" Her voice could be heard calling back to her would-be-savior. Elizabeth had discovered grass and she was crouched down running her fingers through it. She had touched grass before through tears but this was different, it was real and present and she hadn't had to wish for it, which made it more special somehow.

Elizabeth stood up and moved to the tree and ran her fingers up along the trunk to feel the rough texture of the bark, then leaned her head back to stare up through the softly shifting leaves. "It's so beautiful..." Elizabeth turned slowly in a circle, eyes skyward, getting happily dizzy with the way the sunlight danced and played with the leaves in the wind. "Mr. DeWitt, isn't it amazing? I've never seen a tree from this angle."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

THE TEST-DRIVE MEME

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject