TEST DRIVE

[specialcollections]

TDM

SCOUTING - WHO'S THAT VILLAIN

It says something for the time that the walls of the pyramids are still gleaming, new and bright and shining, sanded impossibly sleek. They're a glimmering temptation for tomb robbers, but for the moment they're safe and well guarded. The Nile is more blessed and lush than it would be in later years, though not quite as fertile as it would have been a century earlier.

Something is supposed to happen tonight, though, and the Library has no idea what. Just that it's supposed to happen on this night. That in the morning, the massive tombs will be reduced to rubble, that the Sphinx will be little more than assorted boulders, that bodies will fill the desert. Something will continue hunting the world and shattering all of the holy relics and religious iconography that connects mankind to their gods and the next life. For someone technologically minded? Not a big deal. But a huge one when someone with a particularly blessed soul needs to be born in another 4,500 years and won't have the power to fight the threat that they need to.

If someone can catch the moment when things might turn, either return for help or stop it themselves, they can save not just the lives of those in the Pharoh's domain. They just need to know exactly what and when. It could be another time traveler stopping a threat at its source. It could be some sort of hellish force lashing back against the gods. It just needs to be stopped.

SALVAGE - A GOOD BOY

What was once a mighty secretive organization on an alien world has failed in its protective duties. Facilities with rows and rows of protective cells now lay derelict. In this one building in particular, some doors are torn off their hinges. Bodies can be found in various positions of anguish. Something, or a variety of somethings, scoured this world clean of the dominant sapient life and as a last-ditch effort to save what they could the people of this complex loosed every captive creature and being that they were keeping, and they still didn't manage to reach them all.

But in this building there's a very special computer, one with a predictive nature. There are any number of exceptional relics here that could be brought back to Alexandria, and they'd love them all, but the researchers would especially like to add this computer to enhance their powers of prediction to get the most accurate results with the most certainty possible.

Problem is that there are a lot of special access cards, many locked doors, and a few nigh-on-indestructible monsters between here and there. Such a small little thing might not be such a simple task to retrieve, especially in a building that seems specifically made of materials to inhibit teleportation (can't let certain subjects get loose, after all).

COURSE CORRECTION - BROKEN ENGLISH

There is an outcome that can't be avoided in this particular path. London is burning, people are dying, the streets are filled with carnage in one man's ceaseless search for war. Blimps travel overhead, spouting tinny German down upon panicked civilians as literally monstrous nazi soldiers attack the streets.

The sky is filled with zeppelins, and planes drop bombs in a throwback to the old war from decades before. In another universe with similar souls, this would be playing out differently. An exceptional team of monster hunters would be stopping this disaster, teaming up and with noble sacrifices eventually stopping the onslaught. But in this universe there is no noble sacrifices, no loyal soldiers to secret organizations built into the world to run out and prove themselves, no religious warriors ready to exact holy deeds.

There are just monsters. Vampires, werewolves, and clumsily made cyborgs are ready to use their various skills to go find what the planes and zeppelins overhead cannot. This needs to be stopped by a team of sufficient skill and strength to do so.

DOMESTIC - HOME SWEET HOME

Because Alexandria was pretty much built off refugees from different worlds, there's a wonderful mix of species and races and foods and types of construction in the civilian portions of the city, the areas that aren't part of the massive library. Unfortunately, some people do still carry old hate with them and fights do still break out. People do still have their very natural flaws.

A particularly rough fight, in true dramatic movie fashion, led to a bunch of sales carts in an open market being crashed in.

If you want your fair share of groceries, some of the vendors are letting people take some, or are making them simple dishes of food, if they help them clean up in the aftermath of the brawl.

R&D - MAGICAL DESIGN

Everyone's heard of the stereotypical crystal ball, and there is a healthy collection of them in the library. Unfortunately most of them operate via magic, and in magical aversive worlds this doesn't give course correctors and scouts much time for caution if they need to check their pathing. So the Library is putting the R&D department to the unique task of creating a completely digital version.

This may involve converting it to magitek first, or careful trial and error in a testing room, or just losing sleep over design attempts while a magical orb stares you in the face.

Whatever is the case, it's now your assignment to help in the creation of a device that can provide glimpses a few days into the future using this relic as a base. Try not to break it. Getting them is expensive and troublesome.

NAVIGATION

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Comments

salvage -- assuming enough cr she knows yondu's on her side lmfao

[quietisviolent]

Coming from Night City you'd think you'd just about have seen it all: kids playing with handguns in alleys like they were toys, drug deals, workers pulling people into deeper and darker alleys, dolls with chips fried in the middle of a job because they knew too much, the braindance of a man living his last minutes crucified as some penance for a crime that (in the context of Night City) was really no big deal. Your chooms stabbing your back and leaving you for dead. You know, all the usual stuff.

This place was almost, almost in her wheelhouse. Creepy as fuck building? Check. Lots of corpses? Check, even if they usually weren't corpses until after she left. Lots of tech everywhere? Check. High-security building? Iffy but she's done it before. Supernatural fuck all the rules bullshit? Definitely out of her wheelhouse. Klepping a computer sounded super easy and she definitely didn't review any materials regarding this place before getting here but now that boots were on the ground she realized that perhaps she sould have brushed up on the specifics of everything. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, didn't.

Alena was looking for anything useful at this point and she thought that there was a room nearby that included a map, information on the inmates (or whatever you called these things), and perhaps even a clue to where the computer they were looking for was at. Her eyes locked on a figure in a doorway with a lab coat and she slowed her pace. It was focused on something or someone else, it seemed, and she slowly started to pass by the door quietly to avoid drawing its attention.

She stopped when she saw Yondu inside the room and her eyes narrowed slightly and she tilted her head as if to ask what was going on. Surely he could hear her thumb the safety on her gun and cock it even if she didn't raise the weapon towards the figure between them.

[yondu]

He's carefully contemplating an escape path, ready to squish himself against the frame of the door and ooze out with the skill of a disconcerted ferret. But then here's his mission partner and, well...

He shakes his head frantically as he hears the gun cock, realizing what she has in mind. Nope. Nope nope nope.

He points from his eyes to the "man", or what used to be a man, without taking his gaze off him. Makes a 'pew pew' fingerguns with his fingers. Shakes his head again and makes a cutthroat motion, before pointing between himself and loosely at her (because he can't look at her). God, he wishes he'd taken up that hand signal stuff from that Amaya lady 'cause if they were anything similar then he'd not be in this dire of a situation, and he cannot look away to write something down.

Hopefully she keeps her eyes on the meatpuppet. In the meantime he does what he planned, before his eyes start to sting he moves around the door, very carefully not touching the creature, and walking backwards toward a decontamination door. He motions at her frantically to come with him. He's not sure that it can open doors but he knows if they should both make the mistake of simultaneously blinking, with how fast it moves it'd easily gain a good twenty feet in a split second.

[quietisviolent]

She was already starting to slowly raise the gun and angle herself so that a stray bullet wouldn't embed itself in Yondu but the movement of his head shaking caught her attention and she stopped again, looking at him with that same expression that was searching for meaning.

She watched his charades with brows knotting together in frustration. If she couldn't shoot the motherfucker then what's the point? How were they supposed to deal with all of this shit if they couldn't fight it? What was more frustrating was she couldn't even ask - it was clear that Yondu was keeping his eyes glued to this thing for some reason or another and he couldn't look at her signing. Trying to talk was more effort than it was worth, she felt, and these things had such ridiculous rules that it was possible that sound was what would set this thing off.

All she can do at this moment is mirror what Yondu was doing -- it was clear that he knew something about this thing that she didn't. She focused her gaze on the figure and noted the way it seemed to track Yondu's movements. Something about the way it moved was unnatural and eerie, not that she could put a finger on what exactly about it was so unnerving. Perhaps it was the way it just stood there and watched while the pair of them stared back at it - surely something that was actively hostile would do something or have done something by now?

She silently fell in line with Yondu at his beckoning, backing up toward the decon door with him. Alena stared on at the thing as they backed up with an unwavering gaze. If she knew specifically she had to keep this thing under her gaze constantly she would stop blinking altogether - mechanical eyes don't need the same care real ones did - but it was such an ingrained habit she didn't think about it.

The safety to her gun goes back on and she puts it away and her hands formed fists - the thing seemed content to stay where it was at the moment but if she couldn't shoot the thing she could surely hit it if it made a move while Yondu fucked around with the door. She didn't have gorilla arms or any big knucks but she still knew how to throw a punch that'd make any (normal) person think twice. She jerked her head towards the door to tell Yondu to do whatever he needed, she would keep an eye on the thing watching them.

[yondu]

It's a luck of timing that, as his back hits the decontamination door, their blinks coincide. Deeply unfortunate, because the shift from location and impossibly fast feet place the being a good eight feet away from them. Yondu, without moving his gaze, holds out his arm to keep her from lifting his gun. He hopes she knows that if he's not using his arrow, with his usual nonchalance about taking a life, there must be a very good reason he's preserving this one.

It's not out of kindness, or benevolence, or the blind idealism to do good. It's self-interest. This thing is more dangerous dead than alive- but then again, there are a few things in this building like that. Or things they flat out can't kill.

He'll explain it when their asses are marginally safer. There was nothing saying that thing couldn't read or understand speech, even if it wasn't talking.

He manages to feel his hand over the card reader, figure out where to swipe, and has to try three different cards before it opens up and lets them back into it. He doesn't take his eyes away from it.

Once the metal door slides shut he's already running to the other one, trying to get his card out and through it before whatever it is finishes doing what it wants to on the other side.

"It moves bodies if ya kill it. Only way to stop it is by bein' able to look at it. When it's in someone, you can look at it. So that poor bastard's gotta stay that way."

He can hear the thing on the other side of the door and he wants out of the decontamination area as quickly as possible. Or at least out of the way for now. Who the hell knows if it's smart enough to find its way around but he has no doubt he'll do his best to.

[quietisviolent]

The sheer amount of movement the thing managed to cover in a blink made Alena flinch back a little. She'd seen people move fucking fast before: people like her had berserk operating systems that could tune reactions, movements, and hormones so that time ran slow for them but not even the most advanced of those operating systems could manage what that thing just did. You could still track the most advanced assassins with their burst movement and plot where they would dash next. This thing was on some other level of bullshit and she couldn't find it in herself to appreciate it.

It made her wonder why the fuck it bothered with staring them down at all. There was no way in hell the two of them could possibly hope to fend the thing off so what was it waiting for?

She didn't dare blink after this display, though. It seemed to be content with watching them for as long as they watched it (for whatever reason) so she wasn't about to take her eyes off the thing as she backed herself up so that her back pressed against the same door that Yondu was pinned on. She just about flinched at the way the door ground its way open. She backed her way through that door and kept her eyes locked on that hellish corpse. It wasn't until that door closed between them and it that she bothered to blink again.

The explanation made sense and she understood why Yondu didn't want her to shoot it. It made her rather uneasy to think that if she had shot it then Yondu or herself could have been the next puppet for that thing to pilot. This place was a lot more dangerous than she'd initially thought and this fact was just now hitting her.

While the thing had its way with the door and while Yondu fucked around with the next card reader Alena looked over the mechanism of the door that they'd just come through. It seemed like many of the things trapped here were relatively intelligent from what she had seen. Just because this thing hadn't opened the door yet could only mean that the corpse it was wearing lost its access card before they'd reached this predicament. She ripped the faceplate off of the card scanner and started to trace parts of the board and some of the wires with her fingers as her eyes lit up with blue light as she scanned the component. She knew what she was looking for but she wanted to be very certain she was looking at the correct thing. She knew if she shorted the wrong circuit the door would open rather than depower in a locked state and that made her just nervous enough to hesitate.

[yondu]

The scrambling at the other side, inhuman and as fast as rats in the walls, was a hell of a motivator. But then it got eerily quiet. That concerned Yondu more, and he kept facing the door and let her handle that card reader to get them through. Maybe it was trying to work its way in the same as he had.

Still, they needed to get that damn computer. He needs the money and the leeway that kind of travel would give him.

"I'd love to blow this place up when we get done here, but I think I'm seein' why that thing needed to be rounded up and held. I ain't gonna go out of my way to mess with it, but I think we need to consider tryin' to pen it up."

Somewhere. Hard to do if it was intelligent, which he's guessing is the case. Smart enough to find its way around. But Yondu has enough of a decent bone in his body, developed from too much time around some good hearted kids, that he doesn't want this thing out and about.

[quietisviolent]

It was one of those situations where the scratching and clawing noises of something wanting to break them to pieces were more of a reassurance than the silence and there was no way to know it until that silence fell. There was no way to know if the thing was still there or gone; no way to know that if it was there it was trying to open the door or just waiting. Maybe someone had come across it and was staring at it. As the silence fell between them she paused and straightened up, looking towards the door that separated them from it.

She glanced back to Yondu when he started talking, then shifted back to her work. Not that it lasted for long. Her work slowed then stopped after Yondu suggested trapping the thing somewhere and she paused for a long moment before she stood and faced him, first trying sign language.

You crazy? Pen it up?

She shook her head in heavy disagreement. Her next signs were sharp and fast to accentuate her disbelief at his suggestion.

Where? How?

[yondu]

"There are some of these airlock things between here an' that computer. If we could time it right an' shut it, could catch it. But it'd be some split second timing."

And while he is being vaguely altruistic, he adds. "...But that's an afterthought. I'm fine with not dealin' with this damn thing if it stays away from us." It just, you know... might not stay away from them.

Doing the right thing is, sometimes, an act of general self-interest and not just a strong do-gooder desire.

[quietisviolent]

Alena's glare lasted momentarily after his explanation before it softened and faded into thought. She had plenty of cyberware meant to enhance her reflexes and give her an upper hand in hand-to-hand and melee combat and Yondu so far has been a reliable backup. It wasn't entirely impossible, just risky. But she was used to risky. She started to respond slowly, still thinking about it.

It wasn't lost on Alena that if they trapped this thing then they could walk more freely in this cursed place. While it was easy enough to deal with this thing right now she could only imagine what a nightmare it would turn into if they found anything else that was the same level of threat but required them to stop staring at the thing they'd just gotten away from.

I have augments that make me harder to kill and if things go bad they will heighten my reflexes and reaction.

She paused, then her eyes came into focus on Yondu.

Difficult. Not impossible. Okay.

She returned back to her work and it wasn't long before she put two wires together and the door started to pull itself open with an effort.