repeter | OCTOBER TDM

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OCTOBER TDM

TEST DRIVE

OCTOBER TEST DRIVE
The city of Recollé...

When the crypt doors creak, and the tombstones quake, spooks come out for a singing wake. Happy haunts materialize and begin to vocalize...grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize...

Every year during the Halloween season, the city of Recollé comes to life with plenty of fall activities for everyone. There's something to do in every district if one were to take a look.

What will you do today?

I.
Family fun seems to be the theme today over in Tribunal Terrace. Several tables are set up and in a semi-circle near Recollé Square with stacks of pumpkins, carving tools, paint and anything else you may need to create your own jack o'lantern. Other stations are set up for face-painting and games to win mini-sized candy bars including a ring toss, bowling, and bobbing for apples. Be careful with the apples though. They like to wiggle and jiggle with their happy little faces staring up out of the water.

...so maybe apple-bobbing is for the brave at heart. Are you the artsy type to carve a beautiful pumpkin? Are you helping to run the games (or even cheating to get more candy)? It's time to relax and let your creativity flow.

II.
Pumpkin-carving not your speed? Never fear, horror is here. Over in Tisse there's plenty to do for those looking for a little more adventure. Several coffee shops have harvest specials made with pumpkin, maple, and pecan flavors. Over at Flix a monster movie marathon and costume contest are taking place (with a prize of two free passes for the best monster costumes.) But the highlight of this district is the annual haunted funhouse.

Anyone daring enough will find the usual spooks and scares in a haunted house, jump scares and fog machines galore. But...the house certainly didn't look so big from the outside. How did you possibly get shuffled straight to the center? No worries. This hall of mirrors will guide you out safely...if the walls closing in don't crush you first. It's a race against time as the halls narrow, and if you're one of the lucky ones you'll escape and exit through the main doors.

For those not quite so lucky, the walls will stop just inches from crushing you completely before the floor drops open and you find yourself on a slide, falling through the dark and tumbling into an underground room filled with plastic skeletons, rubber spiders and more. There must be a way out, right? Hopefully you aren't alone and you can navigate the lair with a friend or two.

III.

Meanwhile, the rest of the city's usual hustle and bustle continues. The shopping districts are busy, students wander the sidewalks after class, and that oddly-shaped ghost appears right in the middle of the crowd.

Wait, what? You could have sworn that ghost wasn't there before. Maybe you don't even believe in ghosts. You may blink a few times to clear your vision, but the faint outline of the ghost remains as a few more of them pop up around the city. They won't speak, but they will cause some trouble for anyone who gets too close whether it's by playing pranks on passerbys, stealing items and running away, sitting on a person and applying a gravitational force so they can't move or other crafty, sneaky tactics.

Are the ghosts messing with you? Or are you going to find a way to mess with the ghosts?

IV.
As the sun begins to set, a strange sort of fog rolls in. Several citizens of the city may not even think it's unusual and others seem to capitalize on the weather. The Churchhill Downs Stables are hosting their annual haunted hayrides through Recollé Woods as soon as the sun sets. There are plenty of carts and chocobos saddled up and ready to go.

Once passengers are seated the chocobos begin to trot forward into the woods as a pre-recorded ghost tour of the city takes place. The stories range from silly ones about two ghost children who like to play hide and seek in these woods to scarier ones about a jilted lover chasing her husband off a cliff at the edge of ocean. For the most part they're a bit cheesy and in good fun, but something about this haunted ride seems a bit...off. Peering into the fog you may see something strange that follows you, be it a monster or a shadow or an object. You may hear things whispering your name and you may see your greatest fear manifest right out of the fog and chase your cart through the woods. Even worse, it seems to follow you right out of the woods and back into the city. No matter where you run or where you hide, the fears from the fog will track you down and they change for every single person in the city.

Will you run or will you fight? You may wish to be careful since the creatures will fight back.

BONUS.
With only a few short weeks left until the end of October, Retrospec's Halloween Mode is in full swing and popping up on new users' devices. Retrospec users will find their application decked out in cheerful Halloween colors, and their userpics in a randomized (work safe) costume. However, there's always a trick to each treat and this time the seasonal mode can't be turned off for new users. Notifications chime with zombie groans, a rousing game of Candy Crush must be played and beaten before you can use your device again, and the new Trick or Treat function has a few upgrades. When a user enables this function, they will be met with the phrase "Trick or Treat?" Users who select "treat" will get one virtual candy! Yay! The catch though is that they will also find themselves in a costume representing that specific candy.

Should a user pick "trick", however, they will find all sorts of harmless but unpleasant things happening to them including but not limited to pranks, being splashed by vehicles driving through puddles of water, being unable to speak in anything but rhymes and other such things. None of these effects last over ten minutes, but the game will show up periodically over and over again and even giving you the option to play the game with others.

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, TDM threads will not count toward your Trick or Treat freebie! Additionally, please remember that TDM threads can only be used for bonus points, not regains.

Please note: you will need a reserve to apply, and current characters must have full AC posted at the time of their reservation.

Your October TDM directory is here, and your AU workshop is here! Our mod questions thread for this TDM is over here!

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[ Out of the entire haunted house experience, the trap door might have been the only scary thing so far, enough of a surprise that Minato had to clench his jaw to keep from yelling out when he'd first fallen through the floor and onto the slide speeding down into oblivion.

It's been quite some time since he'd landed in the room and walked half a dozen times around the perimeter with little luck of finding the exit, when he hears somebody else arrive with the same fate. He approaches her cautiously, not returning the smile, but looking somewhat thoughtful instead. ]

Probably. They'll have to let us out by closing time anyways. ...Or three days.

[ she's chosen a good person for this because hinata immediately salutes, a bright smile on his face. ]

Suuuuure do! [ he's not in a costume, but he has bat hair clips pinning his hair back and up off his neck, and a halloween pumpkin-themed sweater. so there is that. ] Hinata Morisawa will happily join your party, Ochako!

Ahhh, I can't say that, though! But, don't worry! [ hinata will casually sling an arm over her shoulders, trying to be encouraging. ] After all, you're not alone! And it's a pretty usual trick, right? Or, well, I haven't seen it done outside of theme parks, but they should be on a sensor and some sort of quiet motor mechanism, right?

It does seem simple enough... ah! But as soon as I start thinking that way, I'll become sloppy and make a mistake, so I must stay vigilant...

[Bruno, it's just face painting—

Regardless, he's certainly staring with an intense look of concentration.]

[ In the short time all of that happened, Minato doesn't even get the chance to look down the gutter, let alone get run over by a car or even wet his shoes before he finds himself staring up at Yukimi as if he were the one recklessly throwing himself into traffic.

He opens his mouth, about to comment that he's already lived past twenty and it's been a good enough run, but then closes it, because that's not the important thing, is it? His eyes travel over to somewhere above Yukimi's left shoulder, waiting out the lecture— it's been years since anybody's lectured him, or cared to, anyways— and then down towards the gutter again as if contemplating giving it another look. (He is) ]

Your keychain might've fallen down there.

[ "And I will throw my life away for that possibility," apparently. Streets aren't that dangerous. ]

[Yukimi, grand at moving goalposts and for some reason carrying himself like a fifty-year-old man in general, has convinced himself that the closer he gets to thirty, the younger "close to twenty" is. As far as he's concerned, this young man is a kid, and an unruly one, and there's nothing Yukimi hates more than unruly kids.

Or... maybe nothing more he cares about... than unruly kids?

No, no, they just piss him off. His grimace here shows as much.]

If it's in the gutter, now it belongs in the gutter. You sayin' that's where you're headed, too?

[Yukimi is, perhaps, melodramatic in the way he lectures people (kids) (anyone under 25?), going in hard from the moment he starts. He's more high-strung than he appears, it seems...]

Don't freakin' do crap like that. Stay on the sidewalk. Jesus.

[ Wouldn't I? thinks Royce, but he recognizes it for the deadpan it is, so... no. ]

Oh... [ He sounds thoughtful. ] The usual, I would say... Housekeeping, mostly. Putting everything in working order, whether it's—it's time... or priorities? [ A beat. ] Sometimes just for the fun of it. Eeeverything in order. Organized.

I like it. Organizing things... that is. Helps meee... [ He holds onto the word longer than necessary, searching for the next one. The best one. He gives up. ] It helps.

[ Royce just say your phone is full of productivity apps and complex puzzles, jesus ]

You're not—quite the same.

[ Is that a question? Who even knows. ]

[ All things considered, it probably should have. But he'd left by choice, believing he had no choice, and has always been fairly adaptable, so he simply shrugs in response, twirling the ring idly around on one finger. ]

It's fine... The only hard part is finding your way around. Driving around fixes that in about a month.

...Oh. Hello, Jamie.

[The statement makes the kids grumble - awwww, man, why can't we just stay here? what's a stagehand? - but at least they start to give Howard some space. He scratches at his chin with a sigh, clearly glad he has room to breathe.]

You're not here to accuse me of being a vampire too, are you?

[ Yeah, the gutter is where he's headed— or would be, if he could get away from under Yukimi's disapproving scowl, but Minato recognizes when saying so would just make things worse, so his hands find the safety of his pockets, waits Yukimi out, and gives a nod: a single dip of the head, a silent promise, but one nevertheless.

Still, ]

The keychain is important, though?

[ Does it, for example, have keys attached to it? Those are sort of important, and if not him, then some city worker might be able to set up traffic cones and dig it out in safety. ]

i think its mostly to annoy us about how difficult it occasionally is to access the application ngl
so
there isnt a huge point actually

That sounds boring. I've never seen the point in organization. I'm fine with leaving things the way they are.

[It's amazing, really, how they get along so well - Howard is the epitome of laziness and chaos, while Royce is uptight, strict, and detail-oriented when it comes to planning out his life. Maybe opposites really do attract.]

But if it works for you... [He puts Royce's mug down so he can lounge back in his chair with an abysmal posture any good mother would cry about.]

Your work asks for that kind of stuff, so I'm not really surprised.

Haha, if only.

[City workers don't need traffic cones; they're generally, like, thirty-five, meaning Yukimi is content to let them live their lives, for the most part. Or whatever. By the way, he knows an avoidance of lectures when he sees one. He avoided stuff like that in probably every way possible for a very long time, and still brings up his old skill set when it suits him. One might call his endeavors hypocritical, given his former delinquent lifestyle eventually giving way to outright self-destructive behavior, and given his messy way of living now, but never mind that. Yukimi is on a mission, and that mission is this: yell at youths.

Well, really that mission is more along the lines of being the sort of adult he needed when he was between the ages of six and twenty-three. But there's an incredible clumsiness to his approach—unsurprising, given his ingrained temper mixed with inexperience.

He draws out the silence between them until he's mellow enough to be casual.]

I like the keychain. It's cute.

[Now he's stooping, to retrieve his fallen envelopes.]

There's a whole line of 'em, you get 'em from gashapons. The black one is kinda rare. When I finally got it, I switched out the sleeping tabby for it.

[ It's true... Even playing the games properly, you get to keep the apple you successfully fished out, and in a corn maze too there might be leftover corn to grab and not starve to death like they will if they can't find their way out of the mirror maze. They could? theoretically? bulldoze through the mirrors and shatter glass everywhere until they reach the other side of the room, but but how many hundreds of years of bad luck would that be... Hopefully it won't come to that, but it's a backup plan Minato tucks away in the back of his mind. Plan A is to try this first, and succumb to desperation later. ]

Yeah. You start by touching the right wall, and turn right at every fork. Your hand never leaves the wall. [ Theoretically, this works, but not in all cases. ] But we'd have to go back and start from the beginning for it to work.

I'll absolutely pass the information along...and make use of it myself. Admittedly I am also a hungry college student at times.

You have a very photogenic cat, by the way.

Hm? [Howard looks up from his phone.]

Well, it's more of the...mixed bag. The ones with the variety of chocolates, you know? The crunchy ones, the ones with toffee pieces, the ones that are chocolate wafers...

[How...illuminating. He's nodding like he knows what he's talking about, though.]

So I go with off-brand, because that's the cheapest. I find those to be the sweetest, too.

Edited 2017-10-20 19:48 (UTC)

extra annoying malware great

Edited (pick a typing style and stick to it mini) 2017-10-20 19:55 (UTC)

She's beautiful, right? It's like all the angels start to bless her the moment I pull out my camera.

[embed: jennifer10_02_36252]

[embed: jennifer07_23_27714]

[embed: jennifer09_13_00861]

She's always been like that, too.

[embed: jennifer04_04_00006]

[That last image must have been from some time ago, and it's taken not in an apartment, but what must be an animal shelter. The cat continues to be gorgeous, of course, in all these posted photos.]

By the way, as of me posting this comment, I've gone ahead and tagged this entry with "#piggybank mode"--click on that tag, and you'll see other posts with places great for a college budget. I'm not kidding about that baggy full of nickles!

Well, it was kind of hard not to. Staring up at me and smiling from that bucket of ice water...

Is that weird or something?

"They're not fake," Sora answers reluctantly, shoving his hands in his pockets. He kind of wishes they were, though, because they're a huge nuisance. And they steal peoples wallets, apparently. See, this is why he was avoiding the ghosts.

Still, they should probably get that wallet back. Somehow.

"C'mon," he motions to Marina, starting after the ghost.

Alright, we go left then!!

[ Because 'right' would probably lead into a trap, she's sure... but nevertheless, she's definitely going to walk quickly in that direction. ]

And you're the one who wants to pay me to write something I care very little about. Talk about common sense.

[If he had been asked to write stuff about shipwrecks, he'd be on it in a heartbeat. This? He already feels the loathing that comes with being forced to do something he doesn't want to do.]

And what if I say no? Are you going to give me that option, at least?

[ If he likes it, then it's important. While Yukimi bends to pick up his envelopes, Minato turns his eyes up at the nearest street signs, the buildings, what store they're standing in front of so that he can commit the location to memory and come back later to resume his search, away from Yukimi's critical eyes. Finding it would be one thing, but finding Yukimi again would be an even more difficult feat... a problem he'll ponder over later, shifting his weight between one foot to the other as he looks down upon the envelopes. ]

Gashapons are popular back home. Did you get the keychain here?

[ If he can't find Yukimi's old keychain, maybe he'll just try his luck and get a new one. Maybe one for himself too. ]

[Not Mary, certainly.]

Yes...

[In a quiet voice, a little unsure. She does not do well with horror but she doesn't want to back down with Mattie. Or seem lame.]

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OCTOBER TDM

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