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TEST DRIVE

MARCH TEST DRIVE
The city of Recollé...

...probably needs your help.

I.
Like most holidays, Mayor Mayer will come up with any excuse to hold a celebration and have fun in the city. Today for St. Patrick’s Day, the city seems to be awash with shades of green almost overnight. Green ribbons, lights, shamrocks and garland adorn every windowfront and street lamp. Corned beef and cabbage are the specialty at several of the hottest restaurants in the city. Shamrock shake season is back in action, and mint-flavored coffees are available at both A Good Bean and Expressive.

You could just celebrate with some fun and silly traditions today. Or you could slowly realize there’s a distinct hissing sound coming from somewhere near your feet. As you look down, a serpent winds itself around your ankles before slithering off down the street to follow someone else. One by one, several snakes of all shapes and sizes begin rising up from bushes and sewers and tall grass, taking up space on the sidewalks and the streets of the city. Traveling in packs, these snakes slowly start invading the city and turning up in places you may not anticipate, leaving you to have to fend them off and chase them out of city limits.

Mayor Mayer puts out an emergency alert, demanding all citizens work together to fight back against this snake epidemic. Will you work together to get rid of these creatures and release them back into the wild? Or will you find yourself overwhelmed and looking for a place to hide?

II.
At the beginning of the month, two large domes eclipsed the Recollé Art Museum and the Atrium, the city’s concert venue. The "Modern Living" display has been open for a few weeks, depicting life in the city of Recollé with art pieces and sculptures inspired by buildings and famous figureheads of the city including the police chief, the fire department, and Mayor Mayer. But even with that display at the frontmost portion of the museum, it’s the commotion further inside the museum that’s drawing in the crowds.

Word on the street is that people are beginning to see famous works of art run amuck through the city. At first, it seems like they’re just stories, but as you step out of the museum after an educational afternoon (or even if you happen to be in Appraassage), everywhere you look the art pieces begin to take on a life of their own, slipping out of the museum into the city. With these figures running around, the city continues to warp to their familiar backgrounds and create a new image of the city itself. Several citizens have been working to try and persuade these pieces back to the museum, but they could use an extra hand. Some of the art pieces are quite talkative and may even befriend some people! Others, however, seem to want to find replacements so they may spend more time outside of the museum, capturing an unwitting suspect to drag back toward their frames and lock them away.

Luckily, there’s a way to combat them after weeks of varying success. Should you encounter one of these works of art, a simple touch with a paintbrush will freeze them, plastering them to nearby objects for easy portability. Good luck getting them to hold still long enough to find a paintbrush though. You may need to work on the art of persuasion in order to send them back.

III.

The Atrium seems to be having trouble with their electricity issue still, the lighting issue still unsolved as employees look into the wiring and circuit breakers to bring back the power. As employees continue recruiting strangers off the street to try and locate the source of error, you’ll find yourself among these groups that are brought into the dark concert hall and sent on a mission to check the sockets of the building and ensure everything necessary is plugged in.

Even with a light source such as a cell phone or a flashlight, the light doesn’t spread too far as the sound of leathery wings flap somewhere above you. The sockets in the walls are filled with cords that are plugged in or places that spark with silver-white lights. Getting too close is dangerous, and should you lean too close to examine you’ll find yourself getting shocked and blown away from the wall.

A small, electric buzz fills your ears as a closed circuit overtakes you, rotating around your body and providing you with a light source and a dangerous kind of weapon. Electrically charged, anything or anyone you touch will run the risk of being shocked and burned. The lights are out in the wings, and somewhere up above you’ll hear the flapping again as a large, skeletal bat swoops down from the rafters to challenge you. This bat is in the same situation as you are, crackling with electric energy that can shock anything that gets close enough. It will be relentless, following you through the music hall until you find a way to escape, or you fight back and shock the creature into a state of confusion. Light returns to the bulbs above for every hit the monster takes, but that’s still pretty dangerous, isn’t it? Fighting fire with fire is a risky position to be in, but it looks like you don’t have much of a choice here.

IV.
There’s also something weird going on at the Recollé Zoo. A silver door stands out against the brick building, but as you approach it, the color shifts from silver to blue. Should you open this door, you’ll find yourself entering an area with a blast of snow hitting you straight in the face, a whirlwind temporarily blinding you as the door closes behind you. Inside an icy cave, you’ll find several small, egg-like structures with unborn creatures suspended in time. The mouth of the cave lies before you, ergo the exit from this weird region.

Be careful on your way out of the cave, however. Even briefly nudging one of these eggs will cause it to splinter and crack, the creature hatching from the ice and beating its small fists against the ice-eggs next to them. It’s a chain reaction as these little monsters awaken one by one, freeing their brethren and swarming the area. Rushing for the mouth of the cave, you may see them disappear into the snow and dive down, hiding in wait and ready for attack as they trip you up, cause you to fall on your face and temporarily freeze your limbs. You’ll have to fight your way through these groups out into the snow and all the way back to the other exit hidden among the tundra. A silver door can be found on top of a snowy hill, but the journey forward is a long and treacherous one.

Better move fast. The snow shifts beneath your feet and you’ll find yourself sinking down the further you go. Hope you dressed warmly.

BONUS.
The new app on your phone won’t leave you alone no matter how many times you quit it. Retrospec is desperate for your attention, blinking and flashing until you open the new message waiting for you. Upon opening it, however, it might not be the message you were expecting to see.

Hey, welcome, sorry this is so last minute but we’re in the middle of an operation right now. I think this was already in the works before the rest of the team disappeared but I’m doing damage control to get you up to speed. Some of the others might be able to explain it better than I can though. Post to the forum, ask around, and forward all other questions to my office. Z.

The message disappears just as quickly as it came, presenting you with a directory of people to reach out to. However, all of the names seem to be missing, leaving you with a list of randomly generated letters and numbers. Take your chance and click a name. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find someone helpful.

Welcome to the

recolle test drive meme! All characters will be begin in-game AU'd as Recollé residents. You may use any of the above prompts for ideas or make up your own depicting your Recollé AU! Prompts do not have to be set in the districts listed above. You can review our list of locations for what's available. Please note that TDM threads can be used as samples, can be kept as game canon, and can also be used for bonus points for future item regains. Share a few minor details of your AU, tag around, and have fun!

For current players, threads on the TDM can be used for bonus points but also memory regains. Players may also earn one (1) freebie memory regain by turning in a thread of 5+ comments with a character who's TDMing.

Friendly reminder that current players must have full, passing AC before submitting a reservation or an application.

Your March 2019 AU workshop is here! Our mod questions thread for this TDM is over here!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, unfortunately, having the person who is currently part of the group that made the application sending the fresh meat to people who don't work on it.

So congratulations, welcome to Retrospec, where things get weird!

Oh. Wonderful. Because I woke up today and wanted more weirdness in my life.

I don't imagine you know how to delete this thing, or at least to get it to shut up and leave me in peace for a little while?

Trust me: it only gets worse from here on out.

Also, none of us can delete the application; at least not voluntarily, anyway. Although if you exit out of it, you should be okay for a bit. But you might want a bit of an explanation.

I don't know whether I'm upset with you for not reassuring me or relieved that you're being straightforward with me.

Assuming jumping back into bed and pretending what I've seen lately isn't a case of bad sushi, an explanation would be VERY helpful.

Telling the truth is better than telling lies, in my opinion.If I was just simply being reassuring, it wouldn't help you at all.

So basically, let me start with this: do you believe in reincarnation at all?

[The response is slow to come, partially because Asami is gritting her teeth, more than a little wary of this question.]

I'm not sure I believe in it, really.

Please tell me you're not about to launch into a religious pitch.

Edited (Now with correct HTML! ) 2019-03-19 22:23 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm not even religious.

But you might want to take a look at this and this.

[Long radio silence after that.]

This isn't a joke, is it?

How do we deal with this?

[It's probably not clear in what way she's talking about. Probably all of them, really.]

Unfortunately, no.

You can probably check the old posts on the application as well, too. As for 'dealing with it', it's honestly difficult for me to give you an exact answer for that, really. Since it would probably vary from person to person.

The best advice I could honestly give you is find someone on the application you can trust.

Oh. That's simple enough then.

[Not shown via text: Asami's near panic attack at the thought of needing to trust someone, let alone a stranger on an app.]

Thank you for the information, and for helping me out.

And sorry if I was a brat earlier. Guess I'm not used to people messaging me and not wanting something from me.

Yeah.

[ Raina's the same way, really, having a massive amount of trust issues that are just there, really. But she's also just lucky that she has actual family on the application. ]

It's not a problem. I'm still pretty new in comparison to some of the others on the application so unfortunately I can't really answer too much in the way of questions, but I'm glad that helped, at the very least.

And it's not a problem, really; the confusion and frustration is understandable in a situation like this, especially when it all seems pretty crazy. So I get it.

Edited 2019-03-20 18:53 (UTC)

At least we know we're all in this together. That helps a little bit, at least.

[She's tempted to leave it at that. Perhaps it's the partial anonymity the app provides her, or just that she really needs to talk a little more, to come to grips with all of that...]

You don't have to answer this if it's inappropriate to ask, but... have you seen any of these memories they talk about? How does it feel when you see them?

Guess I'm worried about how to react if I was a terrible person in this past life.

Yeah. It definitely does.

I have, yeah. Sometimes it's kind of surreal since there's times when they'd mirror a situation that I just had, but there's times when they don't, too. It's probably different for everyone, but personally the memories seem to match the kind of person I am now in a lot of ways, even if there are distinct differences between my current self and my past self.

But even if your past self was a bad person - in the off chance that winds up being the case, take this as a hypothetical - I think what matters the most is what you do in this life now. To correct the mistakes that your past self made and use those memories to push yourself forward. That's my personal opinion, anyway.

I guess you could also look at it as having a chance to make amends for something that happened in that past life as well? I think that's something close to what my father believes. We... never really talked about that before.

[Of course she also wonders about the inverse of that... what if her past life was someone far better than she is now? Well, that's an existential crisis to put aside for another day.]

This certainly isn't where I expected things to go based on that first message. But I'm actually glad it did. This certainly explains a few odd things I've seen, too...

Basically. You just need to improve yourself. I guess it's not really that much different from what you'd be doing normally.

Well, I'm glad to have helped, even if it's a little bit.

In that case, I almost consider myself lucky. Where I come from there are people who'd charge a couple thousand for a self improvement plan. I'm getting one for free here.

I'm not sure what I could offer, but if there's any way I can help you to return the favor, just let me know.

A couple thousand? That's pretty crazy, if you ask me. Honestly, I wouldn't even spend any sort of money to improve myself, if I could. That's something that needs to be done on my own.

You... really don't have to offer me anything. It's not like I'm doing this to profit, you know? And it isn't as if I got that information myself, so it's fine.

See, that's part of the reason I needed to escape from that place, at least for a little while! Is it bad that, even with all of the craziness you've told me about, I might still prefer this city to Hollywood?

I know. And I would've been a little upset if you told me your gutters needed cleaning or something like that! But I could stand to do more nice things for other people myself.

[She almost types and I don't know many people here in the city so far, but she's still a little too self conscious for that.]

You make it sound like you're kind of famous.

Yeah, that's kind of gross and it's not even equal exchange. But maybe we could just put any favors aside for later.

I've done some acting, though nothing too exciting.

[She doesn't want to brag about it and, on the off chance she's talking to a fan, she really doesn't want to start answering questions.]

Fair enough!

Also fair. Do you enjoy acting, though?

I've been doing it since I was little, and I'm pretty decent at it. And it pays the bills.

[A brief pause before a second message comes through.]

None of which is an answer to your question. I sort of got pushed into it at a young age, and I'm not sure HOW I feel about it sometimes. It's just what I do.

I apologize if I'm stepping on any toes, but saying it like that kind of... sad, honestly?

Like doing something for the sake of simply doing it. Instead of doing it for yourself. But then again, who am I to judge another person's lifestyle?

It's okay. If I didn't want something judging, I shouldn't have said anything, right?[There's a crying laughing emoji at the end. It's a miracle she's gone this long before using one.]

I'm not sure what I'd rather be doing, so I should probably figure that out first. Maybe moving here will help me find that answer.

Haha, it's fine.

I know somebody myself that doesn't know what to do with their life, but I think that maybe a change of pace would at least give you some self discovery. Whether it means realizing that what you're doing now is what you're really enjoying or if you want to do something else completely different.