Test Drive

[travelagency]

Test Drive This is a test drive for The Last Resort. You can use one of the handy prompts or make up your own. Prompts Prompt #1 You decide to go for a dip in the resorts lovely pool with a friend, but there's something furry floating in it. Is it the vanguard of a tribble infestation? Is it a wig from a dignitary? A hairball from a catlike species? Whatever it is, it looks pretty strange. Prompt #2 The honor of a Klingon warrior has been insulted (accidentally or intentionally) and he demands a fight to the death. Perhaps it was you and another who both insulted the Klingon and are fighting him together. Or perhaps you want to seek advice from another before the battle begins? Or maybe you want to get tips for how to apologize or otherwise avoid fighting. Or maybe you're just an observer, selling tickets or making running commentary on the match. Prompt #3 You and another character are on one of the tours of the ruins. Do you find something? Do you get lost from the group close to sunset? Are you particularly annoyed by the tourists? Do you think your Asari tour guide is really attractive (and one disagrees on the matter)? Prompt #4 Make up your own. Navigation

Comments

[makealist]

3. Ben is indeed annoyed by the tourists-- their gabbling is loud and, frankly, boring. If there's anything the Island taught him, it's that the feel of a place is so much more important than the specifics of its culture or technology. The heart of a place-- that's where the lasting power is. The permanence.

He hangs back from the crowd as often as he can, letting someone else try to explain the significance of the smooth stone archways and the symbols adorning them. There are still too many unanswered questions anyway. He opts instead to surreptitiously touch nearly everything, resting a hand here and there while the guide isn't looking. In some ways this place is like certain areas on the Island (Jacob's Temple comes to mind); in others it's very different.

He doesn't know what he's expecting to get out of this, exactly. It's more a 'know it when you see it' sort of thing. But one thing he's determined about: if this place is going to speak to anyone, it'll be Ben Linus first.

[archeologue]

Belloq watches, amused, as Ben brushes the ancient ruins with probing interest every time the tour guide's back is turned. If the touches were destructive, or insulting to the old structures, Belloq might have been angry. But it's respectful, questing, a historian's touch. And these ruins are sturdy enough to handle a gentle palm here and there.

"Communing with the dead?" Belloq thinks of the lost alien builders who constructed this place.

[makealist]

He's startled; he didn't think anyone was paying attention to him, and when he glances over at the owner of the voice Ben looks exactly like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. Already he's calculating how to explain this away as much to avoid embarrassment as punishment, even if Belloq mostly has the right idea.

"Just curious," he finally says, removing his hand slowly from the wall and watching Belloq warily.

[archeologue]

"There is nothing quite like touching history." The only thing better than holding an ancient artifact in his hands is getting paid great sums of money when he sells it on to some rich collector. But the moments when he first finds a relic, holds it, makes it his (for a time, at least), he wouldn't trade that for anything.

"Are you finding what you're looking for?"

[makealist]

"Who says I'm looking for anything?" Ben retorts a bit too quickly. "Maybe I just wanted to see what it felt like." Not that far from the truth, really, which is what he's best at. Mostly-truths.

[vengeance_driven]

Niko wasn't a tour guide, but rather an explorer's guide. He felt that made him different in that he didn't give a shit about what people did to sites as long as he kept them alive. He saw a lot of beautiful statues, buildings, relics of the old Romans destroyed during the war that tore his land apart. A few hands on stone? A bit of peeling paint? Nothing compared to that.

But that didn't mean that he didn't know others frowned upon it.

He was hanging around the local ruins, waiting for his explorer to get done with whatever talk he was doing so that they could get a move on already, when he saw Ben looking around. He leaned against an archway lazily and crossed his arms.

"You ah, getting friendly with the scenery?" He asked in his heavily accented English, tainted with Serbo-Croatian.

[makealist]

Ben peered at him with sharp, narrow eyes and removed his hand from the carving he'd been touching. He knew Niko wasn't technically with the tour, that he probably didn't even care from the way he was lounging around. But that didn't mean he wouldn't, for lack of a better phrase, 'tell on him.'

"You could say that." He nodded to Niko's posture against the arch. "And what about you?"

[vengeance_driven]

"Just waiting for a friend." Niko didn't look like he was that eager to move and go find someone to tattle to. He was more interested in fiddling around with the map on his communications device.

"You looking for something in particular?" He asked with the tone of a man who, if not able to find it, might know people who could.

[makealist]

Oh, Niko, even you and your network couldn't find what Ben needed. But Niko's nonchalant attitude did put him more at ease.

"Just window shopping." Said with a half-smile with no real warmth behind it.

[vengeance_driven]

"There is a lot to look at and a lot of nothing to look at-" he vaguely gestured at the tour being led through, some children arguing about where they'd rather go next and their mother trying to shush them over the talk from the irritable looking tour guide.

"But I guess that is what a lot of window shopping is." He pulled out a piece of gum. "Who are you?"

[makealist]

Straightforward sort of guy, wasn't he? Well, there was no reason to make up a name, at least. In a lot of ways he'd been given a clean slate just by coming here.

"Ben. Ben Linus. I'm joining the research team here." He even offered a hand to shake. See how nice he was being?

"And you are?"

[vengeance_driven]

"Niko Bellic." He put the gum in his mouth after he responded, at least, with some shred of decency and took the offered hand. His handshake was heavy and his fingers sticking out of his fingerless driving gloves were weathered. He didn't look like a man that was only thirty years old, but time had a way of biting people on the ass like that.

One of the many reasons Niko was starting a clean slate of his own; not too well mind you, but he had a knack for finding trouble even when he was determined with every fiber of his being not to.

"I'm a guide with the resort. I go with science teams, they make everybody take one of us so don't take it personally, ah? Most of us are pretty good good shots." He had a long time to learn to use a gun.

[makealist]

Ben's handshake, on the other hand, was more akin to a dead, pathetically flopping fish. And his fingertips were suspiciously smooth for a field scientist's-- if Niko could even feel that with his hand practically swallowing up Ben's own.

"I take my own safety very personally," he said. "Are you a good shot, Mr. Bellic?"

Thought I had replied and I had not. Stupid being sick.

[vengeance_driven]

"It's pretty common practice." Though Niko was a little less adamant about his own safety than some. "I get by." He wasn't as good as say, Boone, but his shot was definitely good, and he tried to remain modest with his abilities.

"You have to, out here. Between the spiders and the creepers. If you go anywhere underground or where you plan to stay overnight? It can get bad."

<3<3

[makealist]

"At least you don't have to worry about polar bears," Ben said with a small smile. In-joke, that smile said. He wasn't even going to mention the smoke monster.

[vengeance_driven]

"No. None of those have turned up yet." But that smile got his eyes darting in a way that he knew he missed something, and he slowed down chewing his bit of gum as if there was some English thing he had missed and maybe if he thought about it long enough he'd be able to work it out.

[makealist]

"Trust me," he said, that little smile still on his lips. "It's for the best." Probably for the bears as well; they never had gotten the hang of such a warm climate.

"What else do I have to look out for?"

#2

[chaoticreckless]

"Whooooa," says the human. She jumps, dodges back away from the hammer-like blows of the angry alien. A circle of people around them both catches her when she veers too far and shoves her away. She giggles.

"Hey, thanks, you guys. Okay, so, actually though, like, maybe you should take some breaths? Did you think about that? Like, breathing. Like-"

The next blow misses her by a hair and she shrieks, half-startled and half-delighted.

"Is this that thing I said about your mom? Because it's not my fault, you know, we had a couple of drinks, me and her and the rodeo clown, we got to talking, she's a very forward lady your mom-"

The Klingon finally hits her, two hundred pounds of armored alien against a hundred and thirty of teenage human. The human crumples, the crowd gasps. It's difficult to say whether it's in approval or dismay.