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

[ Three days. That says nothing about his confidence of how long it would take for people to realize they're stuck down here, but rather the limit they can survive without dying of thirst— a time limit, so to speak. Minato has to get to work in about an hour, so that's his personal time limit, though he would like to get out in less than that, if at all possible, leaning back when Ochako leans forward so he can maintain his space. ]

Here's a way out.

[ He nods his chin up at the slide that had deposited them down here. Children climb up slides in the playground all the time. This one's a bit steeper, and slipping means almost breaking your neck, but it's the most direct way out of here if they can figure out a way to keep their grip. ]

[ The slide...? Huh, she hadn't expected it to still be there... All the better for them! ]

Ah, I see! The sides look kind of slippery, but maybe if we use those rubber spiders to help our grip, we can make it up. [ She pauses, frowning in thought. There's another problem, though. ] But what if someone else falls down here? Then we'll end up right back where we started.

[ That's a very real problem, one Minato contemplates as he stares up at the darkness of the chute. He can't see the top of it, but presumably it isn't very far up, so he shakes his head and shrugs. ]

Might happen. But it's no reason to give the idea up. Maybe we can make it before someone falls down.

[ The traffic is supposed to be one-way, but it's intermittent traffic evidenced by how long they've been standing around without any new victims. They can still try their luck. ]

Hmm.

[ She stares at the slide, as if it will give her the answers they need. It doesn’t, but Ochako nods anyway. ]

I guess most people make it out of there before the slide opens up, anyway, or there’d be more people here, right? And the walls have to be able to open up again like normal sometime.

[ Decision made, she grins over at Minato. ]

Okay! Which one of us goes first?

[ If this really is a gimmick, Ochako's right in that it'll take time for everything to reset, at least the for the length of time it takes for a group of people to pass from one end of the room to another as not to give away the surprise for people around them.

He looks from the slide to Ochako, down somewhere to the side of his feet, and then back up. His confidence in his upper body strength hovers near zero most days, but he doesn't let this on. ]

Doesn't matter to me. We both have to go, but the order... I guess if it doesn't work, I could probably [ catch? maybe not ] break your fall better than the plastic skeletons.

That makes sense, [ she agrees, nodding sagely. ] But if we’re lucky, neither of us will fall at all.

[ Or on one will slide down on top of them, she doesn’t add. That’s already a moot point, thanks to Minato. So she just leans down to grab two of the rubber spiders from the floor, and picks her way over to the slide. ]

So we just kind of… shimmy up? Like this?

[ Feet on either side of the slide, Ochako uses the spider legs to try to grip the it with her hands. It doesn’t work out the way she’d planned, though; they don’t hold well at all. With a sigh, she tosses them back into the piles and tries again. ]

This works way better.

[ ...Yeah, that looks difficult and Minato wouldn't have gotten any further either. They could probably hold themselves up with leg strength alone, feet planted on either side of the curved surface of the slide, but the problem is pulling themselves up... ]

With just your own strength, huh...?

[ His hands itch to slide back into his pockets as he gives her a little room, but he'd be a poor spotter if he did that. ]

Give it another try, I guess.

Well, I guess it would be easier if we had a rope or something to help pull us up, but I don't see anything in here...

[ And where would they hook it, for that matter? What a conundrum... But they can't give up yet! With a renewed determination, Ochako takes off her costume gloves and holds them between her teeth as she sets her hands on the and presses outward. She'll have to be careful going up to make sure she doesn't lose her grip, but she actually does make it a foot or two up. ]

It's hard, but... [ Right hand... Left foot... ] I think we can make this work!

OCTOBER TDM

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