repeter | 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

[ Charge!!! jk Minato walks at a snail's pace, careful not to jostle Shinji too much, and keeping his eyes trained on the ground so that his reflections don't confuse him and cause them to smack face-first into one of the mirrored walls. Like this, he can get through most of it alright, waiting on Shinji to tell him left or right when they come to forks.

That said, he's still curious. ]

...Figured out how the optical illusion works?

[ How are the walls moving... because it's getting to be a tighter squeeze through some of the paths. ]

[Shinji's directions are pretty good - they haven't dead ended or had to turn around yet. From an aerial view, it's clearer what's going on - in all ways.

At the reminder of his obviously wrong guess, Shinji snaps back at him.]

They're programmed to close in and stop at a certain distance, we still aren't in real danger.

[ Good to know. Then, Minato doesn't bother picking up the pace... in fact, he's probably getting noticeably slower... His condition is terrible for somebody who took the train to school every day for much of his life and sleeping away the rest of it: not much strength or endurance at all. Eventually, he has to ask. ]

Are we almost there?

[ Can he see the exit... Presumably, Shinji will know the next several turns and he can tell Minato and go off on his own while Minato takes a breather here, with the promise to catch up later. ]

[Wow, this guy is a weenie... But Shinji won't complain yet about how weak he is, because he's still helping them go faster than either of them could go by themselves.]

Almost. You make a left, and then the second right, and then you're there.

[ Look!!! no, he has no excuse, an hour of stair climbing wipes him out, and carrying a body on his shoulders does exactly the same. ]

That's close. Then, you're alright to walk on your own?

[ As in, Shinji's job is done, and so is his free ride. Off you get, mister ]

Nope. I want the whole way through the maze.

[He's not getting down early unless you make him!

Don't actually make him, he doesn't want to get dropped on the floor.]

[ What a child............

The only spine Minato has is the one Shinji's currently breaking, so he just squares his resolve and deals with it, lengthening his strides so that he can cover more ground with each laborious step.

Two turns, a left and the next right, and their view opens up! So does the floor.

Down they go. ]

[I hope that Minato was ready for the child sitting on his shoulders to start screaming, because Shinji thinks that's a pretty reasonable response to the floor opening up underneath them!

Also he's clinging even harder to Minato's shoulders, sorry if you get anything broken there too.]

[ Minato doesn't have enough air in his lungs to scream, and definitely not when the rest of his breath is knocked out of him when his back hits the chute, letting go of Shinji's legs but too slow to reach out and break his fall when they slam onto the ground at the very bottom.

He vaguely tastes blood in his mouth, bottom lip throbbing, but he doesn't get up. He's just going to lie here and pretend to be dead so he can finally get some peace. ]

[Ow, that was the floor, that was him hitting the floor at a high speed, ow.

Shinji's going to lay here for a minute too.]

...What the heck?!

[He doesn't even care that he said a bad word.]

[ How many years has it been since he considered "heck" to be a bad word? Forever. Forever is also how long Minato intends to lie here too, wondering, in the full minute Shinji lies there in silence, whether the boy had died too and he should consider calling an ambulance to dig them out of this pile of bones.

Alas, they're both still alive, hurting and affronted and there's really nothing more to do that get up and keep going. Minato gets to his feet, considers for a second asking whether Shinji can walk, decides for him that he can, and holds his hand out to lug him up as well. ]

[Unfortunately, Shinji can still walk. It's nice that he didn't break his legs or anything, but he doesn't want to walk even more?

Grumbling, he takes a hold of Minato's hand to pull himself up.]

I'm gonna leave this place a bad review on Yelp.

[ Ken's precociousness has nothing on Shinji determined to singlehandedly bring down the haunted house industry. ]

It's not really a business, so probably... complaints would go to the community center or something.

[ At least, they're a seasonal thing just for the citizens of the city, so it's not like people look it up on Yelp before deciding whether to go, he thinks. Either way, they'll need to get out first, Minato pulling his cell from his bag and switching on the flashlight. He points it around the room in a sweep all the way left, back towards the right, and then shuts off his phone to plunge them back into darkness. ]

Let's keep going.

If I complain to the community center, they won't have this haunted house next year.

[And no one else will hurt themselves falling down a trapdoor.]

Which way?

[ Whether that's for the best, getting rid of an entire attraction and the weeks of cheap scares that come along with it just to prevent some skinned knees and broken ribs, isn't up to Minato to decide, so he shrugs, and points somewhere into the darkness. ]

Twenty paces forward, left face.

OCTOBER TDM

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