repeter | JUNE TDM

TEST DRIVE

JUNE TEST DRIVE
The city of Recollé. The kids are out for the summer and the weather's just fine. The sun's shining brightly, not a cloud in the clear gray sky. Everything seems at peace and citizens are out and about, smiling to one another and enjoying each other's company.

Oh, and this thing (complete with cardboard cut-out) has currently taken the place of the founders' statues in Recollé Square. But that's probably not a big deal.

What will you do today?

I.
What is this thing? Why is this thing here? For those of you in Tribunal Terrace today you may wish to investigate the five-foot-tall spinning wheel. How did it even get here? And where did the statues of the founders go? Even if you cannot answer those questions, it's hard to ignore the urge to give it a spin.

Check out those colors go 'round and 'round. Depending on what number you land on, you will find a notification pop up on your phone with a short list of…words. Are these supposed to be qualifications? Weird. That was a waste of time.

However, the moment you walk away you will find yourself accosted by various recruiters wherever you go, congratulating you on your impressive resumé and leading you to an office in Chata. Their offices have been equipped with tabletop-sized spinning wheels much like the one in Recollé Square that will spin 'round and 'round, determining the position you qualify for. Are you ready to show how these traits make you the perfect applicant? It looks like you have time to consult with your fellow candidates before your turn comes.

Or perhaps you've managed to resist spinning that wheel. The recruiters absolutely love your willpower and determination and want you to join their team! For those who can resist, they will still find themselves whisked away by recruiters to the same office and thrown straight into training to prepare for interviewing their neighbors. Recruiters will set up pairs of interviewers and applicants, leaving them alone to ask the hard-hitting questions and pick the most qualified candidate. Do your best and beat out the rest! It's your time to shine.

II.
Just because school is out for the summer doesn't mean Apparassage is quiet. Students and faculty alike are bustling about already preparing for the next school year. Campus tours of Recollé University run every two hours, and there are open house tours of the local elementary, middle and high school. Perhaps you're a future student exploring the campus and getting to know your future classmates. Maybe you're faculty or a student guide wrangling the kids and keeping them in line. Or you just might be one of the unfortunate ones who have found yourself with six weeks of summer school.

However, no matter where you find yourself in this district things get a little tricky when you're ready to leave for the day. The sidewalks outside of the buildings have all disintegrated, revealing a large void leading to nowhere beneath your feet. Without a clear path it seems impossible to escape, but stacked at the entrances of every doorway are large tiles with the letters of the alphabet carefully printed on them. When you look across the devoid path, you may notice you have a partner in a similar position with their own stack of letters.

Get ready to expand your vocabulary. Building a bridge of connecting words may be your only chance of getting home before sunset. Strangely, as the letters are laid out they seem to suspend mid-air enough to hold your weight as you make your way carefully across this pit. Balance and precision are key in this game. The stack floats along behind you as you cross the void, letters seemingly adding to the pile to provide more materials to build.

But like all games, there can be only one winner. Those who clear their letters first will arrive outside of the district safely, free now to come and go as they please. For those who do not clear their stack in time, you might have luck jumping from word to word to cross the finish line. Try as you might, if this is the method you follow, the moment you land on the winning word to leave the district the letters will glitch out, sending you plummeting into the void and landing on a long slope down to the bottom. Upon landing, you will see a series of chutes and ladders one can use to climb back up. Some ladders lead back to Apparassage. Some lead straight into Tisse, and some even lead to unexpected places. Where will you end up? The journey is up to you now.

III.
The days are longer, the nights are shorter, the sun is shining and it's noticeably warmer. Isn't it a perfect time for a summer potluck? The citizens of Recollé seem to think so and have all gathered today in Hollingberry Field with friends and loved ones to share food and fun. Kids chase after each other in friendly games of tag and hide-and-seek while other attendants mingle with one another, piling plates of food and sharing with their neighbor.

Why, even Mayor Mayer is out today for this summer kickoff with his lovely red Chocobo, Seabiscuit.

As the evening begins to wind down, however, there's a startled cry from the Mayor as he realizes someone has kidnapped his beloved pet from right under his nose. Was it you? How about you? Everyone has become a suspect and it's up to you to solve whodunnit. The Mayor provides everyone with a pen and a pad of paper divided into three sections for a suspect, a method, and a location. Grab a friend (or even a group of strangers) and get ready to interrogate each other to crack this case.

(With a little looking, however, it's easy to see that Seabiscuit's merely wandered down the hill away from the park. But maybe it's better not to tell the Mayor. He seems very adamant about this game.)

For anyone who manages to solve the case, the Mayor will be immensely grateful and reward you with a valuable prize! Congratulations! However, for anyone who fails to solve the puzzle, or even anyone found guilty of this heinous crime, by order of the Mayor you will be subjected to jail time for a full half an hour. (The Mayor can't stay too mad at his citizens. He loves them all.)

IV.
A nice, leisurely stroll through the entertainment district of Tisse seems to be in order. Summer sales are aplenty and now's the perfect time to shop 'til you drop. On the other hand, that doesn't seem to be the only thing dropping in Tisse. Do you hear that? Perhaps it is easy to ignore the sounds of stone crashing to the ground. Construction isn't unusual in this district. You think maybe you passed an ongoing demolition on your way inside a shop. But the crash happens again, and again, and again, a loud string of booms growing closer and closer.

Are those buildings tipping into one another? Or is it your imagination? You may not have time to answer while the string of events is put into motion. A crane swings overhead, knocking into a well-placed boulder that begins to roll down the street. Cranes, pulleys and wires move in sync as the ball rolls right toward you. Will you run? Will you collide right into the next set of traps? You may recall learning about this type of experiment once upon a time, coming to realize the elaborately planned Rube Goldberg machine spans the entirety of the city.

Maybe you're one of the lucky ones and you find a safe shop to dive into to escape. Or perhaps your sole focus is to run and get as far as you can, failing to notice that the large boulder herds you right to the end of the district and into a caged-in area. Make yourself comfortable. Someone from the outside will have to free you. But hey, maybe you aren't alone in this trap. Misery loves company, doesn't it?

BONUS.
The Retrospec app is at it again, just as useless as it's always been. After downloading to your device and allowing you to upload a profile picture, the app seems to take over your phone. Any time you open your phone to use it, a splash screen appears prompting you to pick one of the brightly colored wedges (or one of the two grayed out ones.)

It's time to exercise your brain and buff your trivia stats. Answering a question from your selected category will allow you to use your phone once again, but if you get it wrong? Retrospec will encourage you not to give up and try again.

...or, you know, you could ask someone to help figure out the answer. Hey, that person looks like they're bursting with knowledge! Perhaps it's best to see if they can help you stop this madness.

As usual, any attempt to get the company to reply are futile. Once a question has been answered correctly, phones will return to their usual functionality until the next time it settles into idle mode.

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!

Your June TDM directory is here, and your AU workshop is here!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

III.

[And Magilou thought she was bad at finding things. Well, she was still bad at finding things. She once lost her headphones while she was listening to them. She wasn't even sure how that worked. But if the mayor wanted to set a losing things record, then he was making a good effort.]

"Why, how dare you throw such heinous accusations at me! What did I ever do to deserve such suspicion!?!" [There was a very long list of things, but that was besides the point for her. She frankly was somewhat offended at this piece of paper. And thus, she was rather vocal in her complaints about it.] "How do you even know it's stolen?! It could have just wandered off somewhere. I'm pretty sure Chocobos do that."

"You know what? No. I am not going to tolerate such criminal treatment. You can find this thing yourselves. Just, remove me from that list and count me out of your little mystery game." [Thus, Magilou walked off, although actually she just went off to the side only slightly away from the event after making an entire, dramatic scene. She wasn't that offended, after all. Of course, it is perfectly possible that someone could follow her...]

IV.

[The slow descent of reality into madness was for Magilou, like watching a slow motion car crash. The perfect vision of impending doom so profoundly evident of the human condition. Except she was actually involved in all this mess, which made it all significantly less fun. She had observed some of the... oddities, going on around her, but frankly refrained from commenting. They weren't affecting her life, and no one brought them up to her. The weird sounds and the moving buildings were just, yeah okay they made no sense but she'd just roll with it.]

But then, the abnormalities did come to her. Right now, just as she was stepping out of a store, she found herself greeted with the newest piece of this puzzle. A giant boulder rolling down the street. And thus, she stepped back through the automatic doors, and just watched. Watched people flee in terror, their screams bringing a small smile to her face. Oh, this was going to be one of those days wasn't it? She stepped back out, looking down at still rolling boulder heading down the road.]

"Well, that just happened." [She said, at a loss for any meaningful statements. What had just transpired had basically just come from nowhere. Still, this oddity had not been able to stop from attracting her attention nonetheless. here. And this time, she was involved, given the fact that it had nearly killed her just now. Thus, Magilou embarked on a quest to follow the giant rolling boulder to its unknown destination and watch people scream in terror for her own entertainment. And by quest, she of course meant leisurely strolling after it and maybe finding something interesting going on at, wherever this ended up taking her.]

WILDCARD.

[Adding this after the fact in case anyone wants to do some other form of Magilou Madness. Just hit me up about it.]

Edited 2017-06-17 04:58 (UTC)

[Following close behind her is Katherine, her hand shoved into a pocket as she trudged behind the actress, only a little disturbed by how calmly she was taking this. Only a little, though: she had known Magilou long enough to at least see that she was a little detached to some things.]

It really did happen, didn't it? Its like some sort of messed up child's game or something like that.

[She shakes her head, a light grimace on her face as yells echo from down the street. If it weren't for how insanely impossible this all was, Kath would have been a little more freaked out.

She looks down the street, squinting to see how much farther the boulder had to go before hopefully stopping.]

I hope everyone's okay down there.

"Eh, they're probably fine." [Well they probably weren't but it didn't matter if they were fine or not. Her level of care about the safety of almost anyone but herself was around 5%. Still, she marched alongside Katherine with a bright smile on her face, clearly enjoying herself and all of her somewhat sadistic glee.

"Still, the child's game analogy is accurate. Maybe it's some sort of sign!" [She paused for a second.] "Or probably not and it's just one of the ordinary oddities we have around here. Or well, not at all ordinary but ordinary by Recolle standards."

Your so kind. [Katherine wasn't really sarcastic with people: Magilou was always an exception to that rule. Yeah, that doesn't really boost her confidence coming from you of all people Magilou. Although Kath would be a liar if she claimed there never days where she had just stopped caring about things entirely.]

I'm starting to question more and more what really is ordinary and whats not. I don't know why, but everything feels different now, like some sort of switch was triggered or something like that. [It was weird: she'd always known Recolle was a bit out there, but as of late it felt like some sort of switch was turned in her head that made her see the weirdness in an all new way. And lately, a lot of that was becoming more and more apparent. High-stakes Scrabble games, chocobos, colors disappearing and changing (Oh God that had messed with her.), mysterious automatic phone apps, and now this. Recolle was weird, that was undeniable, and suddenly everything had shifted up to 11]

Edited 2017-06-20 02:19 (UTC)

[Magilou had noticed too, but her reaction hadn't been freaking out and thinking the whole world was going to shit or something. She more was just glad not to be a part of the blind masses unaware of reality. Because it was that state that was far more pathetic than being aware of how little sense everything made.]

"I felt it too, but... it's not as if we can do anything about it, really. Best to just go on with our lives." [And so as usual, Magilou dealt with the world's insanity how she always did: by not caring about it.]

Well...I guess your right about that. [But something inside of Kath tells her that it doesn't really sit well with her. Like if she ignored it, she would regret it. That it would still eat at the back of her mind all the time, something Kath knew was super unpleasant from years of personal experience. She looks up at the sky, which is now stained grey instead of blue.

Dammit, she didn't want to think about it right now.]

So [She starts, hoping to change the subject.] how are things going? Any new productions on the way?

JUNE TDM

Magilou | Tales of Berseria

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How did we end up going existential on this? XD