OPEN | Ride It by Regard on blast

[aurable]

CHARACTERS: Drift and YOU
LOCATION: Simulation Room
DATE: Late April
CONTENT: Driving lessons! + closed starters
WARNINGS: TBD

SIMULATION ROOM

The important thing to remember is to take things slow. And ask me questions as we're going through this. Keep your left foot on the brake pedal at all times until you're ready to move.

[ Drift 'sat' in the passenger's seat where he and his student were parked in the simulation room. The simulation itself was nothing ostentatious or potentially distracting. They were idling in the middle of a nondescript parking lot in the middle of a forested area on a bright, sunny day. It was the sort of place you could find anywhere in middle America near a big box store, only without the store or any visible buildings. Drift wanted to keep things simple and remove the stimuli for dumb stunts. ]

The first thing is to keep both hands on the wheel until you're ready to shift gears. I'm automatic, thankfully. Think of a twelve-hour clock and put your hands at three and ten o'clock. [ A sigh erupts from Drift if the person receiving those instructions crosses their arms at the wrist to be cheeky. ] Alright, but with the corresponding hands — don't get smart.

Before we drive, you'll see two levers between us — the gear shift and the emergency brake. I want you to tell me which you think is which.

[ Hopefully, this wouldn't be too long of a day and Drift's transmission stays in tact. ]

SUNLIGHT ROOM closed to Yennefer

[ There wasn't much sun in the sunlight room. The artificial sky was a dying red ember splotched in the bruised purple of an early evening winding down into twilight. This late into the season, the full verdant green of the meadow had returned, now a carpet of deep blue in the dying light.

Drift hadn't wanted to meet Yennefer during the height of the illusory afternoon. One last means of him cleaving to the mask he had been hiding behind. It was an idea that was ridiculous once he sat down and thought about it. What Drift hadn't been a secret, or even a well-kept one if he had been. A few of the others had found out embarrassingly late into his time here that the man they knew was only a disguise because he tended to isolate himself out of some misguided need not to be a burden.

— And then the situation with Yennefer had turned into a uniquely well-timed mess. Drift hadn't intended to keep anything from her after that night, just as she hadn't expected naked honesty after one encounter. Compounded by the last mission, where they were out of contact through most of it, all she had to go on was a few alarming and understandably hard to believe text exchanges.

Activating his device, Drift sends out one more text — asking Yennefer to meet him in the sunlight room for the truth as promised. Then 'he' sat on the glossy white hood of the vehicle parked in the meadow just off the brook, half concealed in the grass like a crouching predator. There was enough daylight to spare, and the white sheen of this form could be spotted a mile away. ]

WILDCARED

( please feel free to hmu on pm or bretons if you want to write/receive a starter of running into drift anywhere around the station and don't feel like we need pre-existing CR! )

Comments

[choicely]

I found it well enough on my own. [ She had, and she’d ventured here enough times that it’s become more of a preferred place over many others. It isn’t wariness or caution that prompts her to maintain a space between them, to afford him a certain berth. Mostly, she’s staying removed until she has a better understanding of it all — or until he bids her to come in closer, whichever happens first. ]

I wasn’t aware it followed a cycle. [ Though perhaps, like any real sun, even this one must descend eventually, offering the illusion of another day reaching its conclusion. But knowing how popular the room is amongst the other others, it does appear to only be theirs for the moment, and her voice softens for the first time since her initial approach. ]

You don’t need to hide from me.

[aurable]

[ He glanced up with his human eyes at the evening sky — the violet was now an ink spill slowly bleeding in. It was a sight that could lull him into believing it was real even after the hundreds of times he had spent here. The choice of location felt appropriate, revealing an illusion in an even larger one. ]

It does, but since space travel throws off the circadian rhythm in people, no one wanders in during its twilight hours too often. [ The comment and his voice were a bit off — momentarily distracted, answering rhetorical questions to fill space.

He didn't necessarily need to 'look' back at Yennefer to see she hadn't moved. One set of eyes was looking elsewhere, but another was still trained on her. Only when he did had Drift slid off the hood and stood on the ground with all the solidity of a man. ]

I am sorry — I wasn't hiding anything. It was only afterward that it even crossed my mind to be more forthcoming. [ There truthfully wasn't much going on at all upstairs when this had all started. He hadn't been thinking.

Drift looked at the point of his show that dug in the spring soft ground under the long grass as he gave one momentary fidget before saying: ] I shouldn't leave you in suspense.

[ — And then he was gone. The man standing there hadn't disappeared with any dramatic flare. There wasn't any puff of smoke or rattle of mysterious thunder. Drift was there was a moment only to abruptly flicker out of existence with all the fanfare of getting too close to a mirage.

The machine left behind then lurched. The flank of its white paneling shot outward as if it suffered an explosion from within, only for every jettisoned segment to remain attached, revealing that each moving part was working in concert. Metal slid against metal smoothly without colliding or scraping against each other as one shape formed another.

Then, standing there in the grass, was a man. This creature was nearly three meters in height and barely human in appearance. Made of metal and something that moved expressively like human flesh while still holding that alien, inorganic quality like quicksilver. The burning blue-white eyes were set in a face with almost familiar contours obscured by the helm that framed it. The face even had the same wane smile that was still so grim and weatherworn. ]



Hi. [ Drift said ]

[choicely]

[ The part about internal rhythms comes as less of a surprise to her, considering how restless she'd been when she'd first arrived on the station with no concept of the time of day or how many hours it would be until night technically fell; in the interim, she'd simply chosen to forego sleeping until she was too exhausted to remain alert, although some of that rest had also taken place in Drift's bed, coincidentally.

There are suspicions she'd harbored — how could she not, given what had transpired between them shortly before they'd been sent on that mission and separated by space and realm? Something had instinctually prompted her to reach for the weighty metallic shape he had been leaning against, the same exact form that accompanied him now. But she believes him when he expresses his regret; somehow, she does, even if she has no full explanation for why.

Before she has half a mind to broach the question in response to what he intends to do, what he wants to reveal to her here, now — he is suddenly there one instant and gone the next, as understated as a blink, without so much as even a sound to herald his disappearance. It is abrupt enough to make her start slightly, awareness heightened as she glances around the modest clearing for those fleeting, silent moments until that large shape heaves, shifts, begins to transform before her.

This wasn't the structure that had been present on the platform with her before, but the sleek alloy that forges into an entirely different configuration has enough familiarity to it that she can find the places in the structure that resemble her own anatomy — limbs, and a center, and a set of features in which a pair of cold-flame eyes are looking back at her, regarding her.

All at once, she knows — it is him, there in the smile, the weariness that she had been so drawn to in spite of herself, had wanted to uncover the stories that had placed it there. She draws in a breath, but it is almost a gasp, sharp and wondering, and utterly fascinated. ]

... Fuck.

[aurable]

[ Questions had darted behind Yennefer's violet gaze like the stray sparks breaking off from the flame of fire — furtive but curious only to burn out without anything to hold onto. Still, she was alert and still taking stock — neither running in fear nor stirring her anger.

Drift wasn't especially large on the station. At three meters compared to his usual eight, Yennefer wasn't so dwarfed, but still, Drift made an effort to defang himself. The two blades holstered to his sides were unsheathed and struck firmly into the ground to render them momentarily ineffective. Drift lowered to one knee with his head bowed and his burning eyes downcast upon that gesture. ]

I wasn't hiding, it's just hard to get through the doors. [ Drift hollowly joked before adding: ]

If you're angry, that's alright.

[choicely]

I’m not — angry.

[ Anger would be part of the makeup of a different emotion than what she’s feeling right now after finding herself in the position of having to process everything she’s laying eyes on for the first time. She’s known the truth in small increments long before this reveal, anyway; he’d given her the one surrounding his longevity and exactly how many years he’s spent in this existence, but now she has to reconcile it with what he’s unveiled to her now.

There are pieces that get placed down with the methodical fluidity of shedding armor, though these are weapons by the looks of them — familiar, by what had adorned the wall of his room the first night she’d been in it. ]

It is still you. [ That alone puts her more at ease than if it was something so wholly unrecognizable from the face she’d come to know. ] And everything you experience in your other form… is shared in this one?

[aurable]

[ His smile is less melocholic, it actually reaches his impossible bright eyes. ] Well, thank god for that.

Yes — I am only myself. [ Drift answers with sincerity as he lowers himself even further until he lays as down in the long grass as any tenuously tamed creature was, leaving itself up to chance and fate. Arms folded under his chin and helm bowed, Drift looked evenly at Yennefer as his massive form vented with deep, heavy breaths. ]

It's going to be a long evening, even in the vacuum in space. We can stay a while and I'll answer your questions.

[choicely]

That clarifies at least one little detail. [ That even if there are two separate forms he can appear as, there is a link between them, a tether that creates the opportunity for shared experience — and by extension, sensation. (It certainly casts one of their previous conversations into new light, given what he’s only just uttered now.)

She thinks she might nearly have to retreat as he situates himself lower, positioning his frame across the ground and within the tall grass. The manner in which he reclines, though, brings him closer to her eye level, and so there she remains, but she does take another step or two nearer to him, listening to the calm, even sound of his amplified resting breaths. ]

The other form, that… projection, of a sort. When did you first create it?