ASGARD GENESIS - TEST DRIVE #1

[asgardmods]

the test drive meme. ❧ let's do this. Anyone can post to the test drive meme, including duplicates! Please put your character name and canon in the title of your comment. All threads are considered open to everyone! Tag around and make some friends (or enemies)! If you decide to apply to the game, you can use your TDM threads for your app samples! You only need to provide seven comments if you use TDM samples. You can't be "late" to a TDM! This will be considered open until the next one goes live next month. You can make up your own scenario, interact with one of the locations in the game, use the welcome process of your character selecting a god house, or use our optional prompt below! You do not need to pick a god house to play on the TDM! You can have your character still in the process of discussing/deciding/despairing instead. If you are accepted to the game, you can keep TDM threads as game canon as long as you fudge some of the details depending on your original thread. If you aren't sure exactly how to do this, you can always ask a mod. Reserves open on May 25 at 12:01AM PST and close on May 31 at 11:59PM PST. Applications open on June 1 at 12:01AM PST and close on June 7 at 11:59PM PST. Please always feel free to contact the mods if you have any questions! Have fun, dear (future?) Wanderers. ♥ ❧ optional scenario. As you enter Asgard proper, many of the natives have gathered into curious crowds to greet these mysterious children of the World Tree. Some of them carry baskets of flowers and nervously offer one to any Wanderers that come near. They are vibrant and colorful, picked from the wilds surrounding Asgard, and they might have an odd effect on your character if they sniff the flowers directly. Purple flowers will make your character very giggly and easily amused by everything they see and hear. Orange flowers will make your character feel very warm all over, like the sun is beating down on them directly. Blue flowers will make your character somewhat short and impatient with anything that seems like even a minor inconvenience to them. Effects of the flowers can wear off anywhere between a few minutes to an hour. And for those new to Asgard, this scenario aligns with some of the general curses we might have in the game! navigation.

Comments

[freewilling]

[ steve gets a look that very clearly judges the future's fashion sensibilities. hair down to his shoulders? why? for a brief second, he soaks in the joy of focusing on something that well and truly doesn't matter.

and then steve keeps talking.

there's more and it's not good. well, that's not particularly surprising. bucky's tempted to choose not to hear it, but he's gotten very good at ignoring temptations. if he didn't, he'd have been home a long time ago. ]

How many times do I gotta tell you you don't have to carry the world on your shoulders alone?

[ he offers his friend a soft, resigned smile. it's not good? well he'll just have to change it, wouldn't he. for all his coming down on steve, he's just as stubborn. ]

[captain_america]

[ He’s right, Steve knows he’s always right about that but he’s gotten so used to carrying the burden that he doesn’t know another way. The weight of the world has only gotten worse in the last few years, and he didn’t have a lot of people that could help him carry the weight.

It hits him again how glad he is to see his friend here. ]

Probably at least two or three more times.

[ He clasps Bucky’s shoulder and squeezes. It’s more for Steve’s own benefit, he needs the weight of his friend under his hand to tell this story. ]

We thought you were dead, after you fell. We had no idea how anyone could have survived that. But I didn’t think- Zola’s experiments. That’s what we figured later.

But right after that- we captured Zola and we found the last Hydra base and we went in. Red Skull was escaping and I managed to jump on his plane. We fought, he. Well he picked up the tesseract and vaporized? [ That’s still really unclear. ] but the plane was heading to New York with bombs and the navigation system was shot and the only choice I had was to put in the water. In the Arctic. Everyone assumed I was dead, hell I assumed I was as good as dead.

[ He takes a breath because this is still not easy to talk about. ]

They found me in 2011. Frozen but still alive.

[freewilling]

[ the gesture may be done for steve's benefit, but it's certainly welcomed and even needed on bucky's end, as well. nothing feels particularly solid right now, and his grasp of this strangeness claiming to be reality seems to slip further still the more steve talks.

what to focus on first? zola's experiments are definitely out of the running, there's an ever-present fear that if he allows himself to go back there he'll never find his way back again. he can't imagine his body surviving not just the fall - but the endless trek back to safety through hostile territory in terrible weather conditions. what is he? no, he can't afford to focus on that, either.

what he can focus on, however, is steve. steve making the ultimate sacrifice. sure, it didn't stick, but it doesn't change the years that thought shaves off his life (hell, if he's still kicking in 2023, he can afford them). ]

Jesus, Steve.

[ he pulls steve into a tight hug. nevermind that it was years ago, it's about all he can manage. they really shouldn't be doing this outside, his legs feel like they're about to keel over under him, and he was just as likely to punch steve as he was to hug him. he's proud of him, he always is, always was, but there's always going to be a part of him now that wonders if maybe there was another way - but steve was too lonely, too lost in grief to see it; the man is right in front of him, and he's feeling overrun by the emotion.

how long did it take him to get back? how long did he live, not knowing that steve was gone? how long did he live, knowing it despite it being untrue?

in the back of his mind, a piece of steve's phrasing bugs him we figured, but it's shoved back and never quite crosses through to the conscious mind. ]

[captain_america]

[ The hug is welcome, more than welcome because Steve clings to it. The show of affection isn’t something Steve gets a lot of. His friends aren’t very tactile- well maybe Thor is but he doesn’t see a lot of Thor as of late. They dispense affection when necessary, Bucky and Steve had always been different but Steve hadn’t had a lot of time with Bucky through the last few years. He was elusive then he was recovering and Steve was on the run and then he was...gone.

They definitely probably should not have this conversation outside but Steve hadn’t really thought that far ahead. But it’s occurring to him now that sitting is probably how he should deliver the rest of the story. ]

We should probably find some place to sit for the rest of this.

[ Because that was the easy part of the story, the part about himself he could handle. The part he wanted to tell first so Bucky would know why Steve hadn’t looked for him for the 70 years he was under Hydra’s thumb. Why hadn’t come to save him. It was maybe a little selfish, but it also spoke of the guilt he still carried around about it. ]

[freewilling]

[ bucky's not quick to let go of the hug, and even when he does finally step away, his arm remains hooked around steve's shoulder, reluctant to let go, as if steve might disappear if he isn't touching him, as if all of this will turn out to be some sort of fever dream he's having on zola's table.

he nods. ]

I heard something about living spaces. I'm at Heimdall, whatever the hell that means. [ he didn't pay too much attention, granted, he was dazed and pretty sure he was dead and just picking the soldier's afterlife because that's what he died as. ] You? [ my place or yours? ]

[captain_america]

I’m at Heimdall also. [ Because of course he is. ] I haven’t picked out a room yet, or really explored it. [ Hello new roommate. Because Steve isn’t letting you live with anyone else, Bucky. ]

Let’s head there. [ Put a pause on this conversation until they have more privacy. ]

[freewilling]

[ that's just fine, as bucky wasn't about to let him live with anyone else either. ]

Me neither, sounds like we've some work to do.

[ he puts on a smile; it's not quite all there, but he's glad to put a pin in this conversation for a few moments and just enjoy the fact that they're both alive and side by side. ]