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

(Workshop! TL;DR: still manages to be a grumpy delinquent at 28, possibly some sort of teacher but runs a weird blog about food and cats no matter what his actual career is... If you're interested in plotting anything, don't hesitate to comment to that workshop thread or PM this journal.)

ii.

[He's already done the whole deal with the house and the tricks and the terror, or however you want to frame it for yourself. Yukimi is not particularly inclined to frame his own self as terrified. But, at the end of the house's endeavors in haunting, Yukimi is not particularly inclined to do anything.

It's hard to tell how long he's been lying in this pile of stupid skeletons. He's almost lounging. He almost looks comfortable and content. It's worryingly possible that he actually pushed these plastic skeletons together in order to have a place to hang out. Anyone who slides down into the room will find him reclining, chewing gum, and giving a belated, slow-motion glance over to his new company. Whatever such a person says, exclaims, or asks, upon unwilling entry into this underground room, Yukimi only answers, lazily,] You're tellin' me. [It might not even make sense given the context, but he flicks at a skeleton's hand and gives a stubborn, unmannerly sniff.]

iii.

For real?

[Yukimi says it like he's demanding something of someone, although there's nobody from whom he can directly demand anything. Nobody to blame for his distress. Nobody he can look in the face and antagonize. Instead, he's searching his own person, patting down his body with his only available hand—his right arm stops just above where an elbow would be, and with it, he's holding a few manila folders pinched tight between his upper arm and his body.

When neither his jacket nor his pockets produce desirable results, Yukimi starts squinting around at all nearby sidewalk.] You gotta be kiddin' me, [he mumbles, peevish and impatient. Finally he understands that he can't undertake this task all by himself: he demands eye contact with someone unluckily close.]

You seen a keychain? It's vinyl, already kinda scuffed, but don't think it's trash if you see it. It has to be right around here. [He pauses, before heaping on more of that impatience:] Little black cat. [As if it should be obvious what shape his keychain is.]

bonus.

[More manila folders. Or maybe the same ones? It could just be he frequently walks around with these. Either way, he's going to need some new ones; the three he has in his hand right now are splattered with grimy water. Maybe not completely drenched, but there's no salvaging them with the amount of dirt kicked up from the gutter. Yukimi himself isn't looking too crisp, either, having taken a spray of fine mud arced across his body from an overzealous driver.

Of course, Yukimi is plenty overzealous himself. He's pretty loud:]

Thanks, asshole! Thanks a bunch, you freaking lead-footed moron! Dumbass! Good one!

[The driver is a couple blocks away by now.]

other.

[embed: jennifer10_19_49837]

You ever know a cat who loves instant ramen? It's become a problem. Jennifer doesn't even need fish cake or good stock to start trying to choke down my noodles. I don't know if it's the texture or the sodium, but she goes wild for it, and I end up spending half the time I'm trying to eat just pushing her head away from my bowl. Sometimes I want to give in and let her go ahead, since it makes her so happy and everything, but when all is said and done, it'd be bad news for her little body. Instant ramen has come to mean shutting Jennifer in the bathroom till I'm done with dinner.

Eating ramen out kind of hits you in the wallet, though, at least when you're on a noodle kick and are trying to convince yourself you haven't burned out on pork belly just yet. The physical and emotional labor of trying to keep Jennifer's face out of my food is only barely more desirable than the monetary cost of a heavy bowl of tonkotsu ramen. I've been resigning myself to what I figured was a necessary evil.

And then I poked my head into the best damn ramen place you can ask for when you're someone who carries around a Ziploc bag full of nickels.

[Read more]

(This option available for commenting on his blog post! Jennifer is his extremely photogenic cat.)

Edited 2017-10-19 07:49 (UTC)

[She happens to slide down facing in such a way that she doesn't see him immediately, and she's a bit tense from the experience. What this means is that when he speaks, she gives a little yelp, hurriedly turning towards him while clutching a plastic skeleton arm in front of herself defensively. As one does.]

What are you...

[There's a brief pause, as she looks over this strange scene.]

...Did you push them together into a pile just so you could lay down?

[She's looking over his strange scene, but he's totally confident in it. They call this, he believes, "owning it". He chews his gum for a second more before blowing a bubble with it. When it pops, it's a very deliberate pop.]

I'm workin' with what I got, [he explains (???) at last.]

[ Minato has to pull the earbuds out of his ears when Yukimi first speaks to him; between that, eyes unfocused and mind wandering as he walks down the street, his attention was inevitably elsewhere the entire time and he wouldn't have noticed any keychain— or banana peel, or dog poop, or anything more unfortunate to have stepped in— until he trips right over it.

He shakes his head no, he hasn't seen anything of the sort, but offers his help in looking. As in, he assumes the worst case scenario, waits for a red light before stepping off the curb onto the street, and kneels down in front of the gutter. If Yukimi hasn't found it despite looking everything, then down here...? ]

[Call him a grouchy jerk, whatever. He'll huff and puff about whatever he pleases; he'll act inconvenienced to stupidly save face. But this kid, quiet, spacey, is out in the damn street, ready to dig around in the damn gutter, and Yukimi's blood pressure sky rockets. He thinks, I'm gonna have a heart attack. He thinks, I'm gonna have a fuckin' aneurysm. He thinks, Brats are gonna be the death of me.

He moves like a cat catching a bird out of the air: a neat little slip, and his hand has grabbed onto the back of this boy's shirt. He yanks like the very jaws of life, trying to heft him back onto the sidewalk.]

The street is not for going into! [His voice is pinched. Minato may as well be in preschool.] You don't just go out there! We have the sidewalk for a reason! Jesus, do you know how dirty that crap down there is? You wanna get splattered all in there, too? [The frazzle, by the way, has led to him dropping his envelopes. They've landed scattered, just around his feet. He doesn't pick them up yet; he's not done.] Ahhhh, geeze, you wanna die before you're twenty? You gotta pay attention! To everything!

[His hand is fluttering around Minato's person, meanwhile. Since dragging him up onto the sidewalk, Yukimi hasn't quite laid his hand back on him, but he'll still hover around his shoulders, or near his hair, as if checking for injuries that couldn't have possibly happened that quickly.]

You dumbass. You okay?

[ 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.

[ 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. ]

[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.

[ 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. ]

There's a...

[Once Yukimi gets hold of the last of the envelopes, he straightens out of his stoop, and replaces his paperwork to their rightful grip: upper right arm pinned against his torso. The sleeve of his jacket is knotted, like it always is, so the envelopes are held securely when he's not flailing around like an overzealous stress case.]

There's a family store, tucked away real small somewhere. Little family, little store. They came over, [from Japan, he means,] I think within the last four years or something. Good people. Anyway, they've got a few of the real deal over there, and the vinyl cats are, like... my favorite... didn't expect to see 'em...

[He's trailing off, a little distracted, even as he's watching Minato. His eyes aren't exactly uncritical yet.]

It ain't a big deal. You know what? A ghost stole it. When shit like that happens, sometimes you just gotta call it a day. Ghosts are formidable. Don't forget that.

[Jury's out on whether he's serious.]

Kazuhiko Yukimi | Nabari no Ou

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you made me nostalgic, so lets see if i can dust this off; iii

Bonus