repeter | OCTOBER TDM

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! tdm

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(brackets are fine if you'd like to switch to that! here is her workshop comment, Kairi's name in this AU is Marina and she's a senior in high school! you can contact me at

ahmsi if needed)

II.

Haunted houses? Spooky scares? Marina is so there. Having no one to go with isn't going to stop her from going through the haunted house on her own, always up for a challenge and loving the adrenaline rush of being spooked. The jump scares make her laugh and startle, and the foreboding atmosphere only serves to excite her more, enjoying the feeling of dread growing in the pit of her stomach as the haunted house seemed to go on far longer than it had any right to.

Set ups with halls of mirrors were always disconcerting, and this time was certainly no exception. Seeing yourself going on infinitely in the corner of your eye was enough to give you a jolt, the slightest movement of your own causing an accidental reaction. However, any fears Marina feels is ramped up to an extreme as the walls begin to close in around her, causing her to take off as fast as she can towards the exit with a yelp of alarm. Who knew claustrophobia was such a fear of hers?

She knows logically that this was all playing pretend, but she allows herself to feel the adrenaline rush of fright as she runs along, huffing and regretting just how little she actually bothered to exercise. Not the fastest runner, this one. Thus, down the slide she goes with a yell of alarm at the sudden drop, sliding down into the pit with an "oomf".

Yeesh. Marina swats some fake spiders out of her hair and stands up, brushing herself off further and glancing around at her surroundings. Ah. Hm. She had absolutely no idea how to get out of here, with there being no obvious doors.

As her eyes adjust to the dark, she makes out another figure, heaving a sigh of relief and offering a slight wave.

"Hey. Stuck down here too, huh?"

III.

Incredulous, Marina stares across the street at the ghostly figure, blinking rapidly as if it might cause the sight to clear out of her vision. When it's obvious that she's actually seeing exactly what she thinks she's seeing, the immediate thought is to figure out how in the world someone was doing this trick, and where it was coming from.

She glances around at the nearby corners and street lamps, looking for any sort of camera or projector, eventually approaching and circling around the figure in confusion, causing quite a few confused looks from people wondering why she was walking circles around nothing in the middle of the sidewalk.

The first person to actually stop to also stare at the figure in the street will catch her attention, and she gestures towards them, voice low.

"You see this too, right? It's not just me?"

IV.

Okay, so hayrides weren't exactly on her list of things to do when she was alone, they were more fun with friends considering they weren't exactly that scary, so she wasn't planning on actually getting on the ride at all.

What was catching her attention were the birds attached to the hayrides, causing her to stare dumbstruck at them as her brain tried to process what she was looking at.

"Since when... what...?" She seems pretty stuck on this train of thought, mouth partly ajar and brow knit.

"Hey, uh..." She motions towards the nearest person, still staring at the Chocobo. "You see that too, right?"

[Cleo had been trying to scale the damn wall when Marina drops from above. Well. Okay. She sheepishly detaches from the wall, trying to pretend she didn't do anything odd, and praying Marina didn't see that.]

I am... Is this a normal part of haunted houses?

[Cute, this girl was dressed as a cat. Marina had been considering a witch for Halloween herself...]

No, this is the first time I've ever seen something so complicated. How long have you been down here?

Only a few moments...

[she sighs, looking back at the wall.]

I couldn't find a door or anything, though.

Well, there's gotta be something, right? They couldn't have come down here and decorated without a way in besides the slide.

Maybe the door's blending in with the walls? It might be a game of some sort.

[The low light certainly didn't help.]

... I do have an idea, but it is... probably not the intended solution. If there is an intended solution.

[she stares up at the way they fell from....]

[Marina follows her gaze, balking a little when she realizes what she's implying.]

You want... to climb all the way back up? That seems dangerous, at the very least.

Not all the way. I can boost you a fairly significant part of the way.

[... but not enough, probably...]

But it's so high up, how am I supposed to get you back up, too? My arms can't reach that far...

[Cleo, this idea is terrible.]

...Before we try that route, why don't we carefully check the floors and walls? Look for any cracks that might indicate a way out...

[... she wasn't even thinking about herself? gotta help anyone else in there.]

I suppose... I've looked, but don't see any.

[Cleo, pls...]

Uhm, let me do a look over, too... that kind of stuff is easy to miss.

[After all, Cleo hadn't been in there very long before she arrived, or so she'd said.]

Ah, I'm Marina, by the way. I figure if we're gonna be bunker buddies down here, we might as well know each others names.

Kairi | Kingdom Hearts

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