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

[ They sure do exist, and he even knows the term for it in Japanese cuisine. But culture and ethics aside, fruits aren't animals. They aren't sentient. They move, but they don't react, and that's the largest different to him, who takes another bite of the still smiling apple, and now half its face is gone inside of Minato's own uncaring mouth, slow chews so that he's not swallowing whole pieces of nut. ]

Things don't need a brain or nervous system to move, just chemical signals will work. Like a Venus flytrap, or Mimosa pudica.

[ Which moves at the slightest of touches, but in the end is just a plant. ]

[Foggy manages to keep his mouth closed for a minute as he gives Minato's point serious thought. His face flashes between several different emotions. Confusion, disgust, resolution, frustration, and finally acceptance.]

You Sir have an excellent point. Plants can move. No idea how they do it with their fruit, how the hell it keeps moving after it's picked, or why they have those creepy human-like faces but at least we're not a city of apple serial killers.

[That's a big weight off his chest. He side glances back at the tub of floating apples and their stares and half his face scrunches up.]

The eyes don't bother you even a tiny bit still?

Yeah.

[ Just because something is natural, doesn't mean it's right. Of course the eyes bother him, but it was a slow growing concern instead of a sudden realization that the apples he has been eating all his life should probably not be staring back at him as he peels the skin off its face. Slow meant he had time to reason things out, just as he'd done with Foggy, and with nobody else finding anything wrong with them, it's easy to convince himself that the unsettling feeling is just him. ]

I just try not to let it bother me. People are allowed preferences, though. Some don't like eating animals and go vegetarian. Some don't like eating apples and... don't eat apples.

[ He likes apples, though. He can't be that person. ]

[He sighs.]

Man apples are one of those healthy foods I actually like! I don't think I can give them up. Any chance the local stores carry the type without faces like every other city in America? Or am I going to have to take the bus out of town to get a Granny Smith that won't hold staring contests with me?

[ Minato shakes his head, but it's a "I don't know" shake and not a "No" shake, somewhat evidenced by the lift and drop of his shoulders. ]

I just moved here a couple weeks ago. Apples in Japan had faces. Everywhere I've lived, actually.

Well now that you mention it. I think. Maybe. In New York they. Uh.

[Foggy gazes upwards as he flips back through his memories of small corner stores and stacks of produce on sunny sidewalks and the occasional walk or taxi ride all the way to a full sized grocery store. Apples, oranges, lemons, and limes were stocked, apples and oranges the most often, but had there been faces on any of them? It feels like there must have been at some point but he can't picture it in his head. The only faced fruit he can recall are the ones he has seen since he came to the city.

"Again. What the hell?" he wonders.]

They must not have stocked them at the stores where I shopped. To be honest I don't exactly spend long hours in the produce isle choosing between the perfect kale specimens. Maybe it's just me.

But hey welcome to the city! I moved here and dragged my little sister with me back in August for a job opportunity. What brings you to Recolle City?

[ All the way from New York... If it's the City Foggy means, Minato has a vague recollection of where it is on the US map, and knows that it can get pretty expensive to live there. They probably stock perfect faceless apples in those stores, if such a variety exists, and leave the unnervingly faced ones for the local areas where they're grown.

There's a little pang of jealousy at the mention of a sister who Foggy got to move together with, but Minato shrugs that off and manages something of a smile in its place. ]

Thanks... Came here for grad school starting next year. Thought I'd move here early to get a job and save up before then.

Attending RU. Good for you Man! Which program are you in?

[Foggy has yet to meet a student he did not want to encourage. This was the life of a man in education. "I don't know you but study hard and make your dreams come true." Thankfully he doesn't say it aloud from the get go every time he encounters someone attending some type of class.]

Veterinary medicine.

[ There's very little passion when he says it, not because he doesn't like the field of study, but he's also on the fence that it is his passion, going for it largely because he's geared himself up for the school over the past few years and that's where his life is headed now. ]

...If it's any consolation, we didn't learn about apples in animal physiology. What about you? What job did you come here for?

[Not the typical excited smiling answer college students give when they have a declared major. Interesting but nothing Foggy is going to force him to talk about while the apples are watching.]

I teach English and Drama at the local high school. I figured new job, new city, why not be a little adventurous?

[Plus it put more miles between him and the birth mother he wants to avoid. Sweet bonus!]

The apples were not the type of adventure I was thinking of but I guess it counts.

[ Minato hums a little in response, about as keen on English and Drama as Foggy appears to be about veterinary medicine. If it isn't obvious by the accent in Minato's voice, English is his second language and one he doesn't have much practice in, for as little as he prefers to speak. Drama too... There's no way he could enunciate or be expressive enough to participate, and watching plays isn't something he has done much either. ]

Everything's an adventure if you think it that way. There's a saying about something like that, right?

Yeah. Several sayings actually. It's a theme a lot of people have explored. Pretty sure they all came up with their messages with the more salient concept of life itself in mind and not to help themselves deal with the fact apples have faces. But you know what? Sometimes inspirational quotes are what a person needs to get past these kind of small but screwed up things life throws their way.

[His nose wrinkles again as he reaches into the bobbing take and grabs one of the apples much to the displeasure of the person watching over the game. Foggy glares into the eyes of the fruit.]

"An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." Maybe I should just go for it. Maybe if I eat one now I'll feel better.

Yeah. Go for it.

[ The only way to know is to try!!! Either he feels better and is able to get over the weirdness enough to enjoy apples again, or he doesn't and swears himself off apples forever. But at least he'll know. ]

Just gotta pretend the face isn't there. The eyes. God I hope they're just markings on the skin of it and not actual eyeballs. I forgot since the last time I ate one.

[Perspective does so much to a person's memory and appetite. Foggy squeezes his eyes shut and takes a large forced bite. The apple crunches against his teeth as he tears the first bite off. He chews it thoughtfully. He continues frowning but he opens his eyes again as he considers the experience.]

At least it doesn't wiggle any more when you bite it. I was worried it would react like it was in pain but it didn't. That kind of helps? I don't know. I still prefer the faceless kind but. I guess. If I had no other choice. I could tolerate this.

OCTOBER TDM

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