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aftr_ooc2018-04-13 08:39 pm
lifeaftr_mods) wrote in aftr_ooc2018-04-13 08:39 pm
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TEST DRIVE MEME ( 010 )
Test Drive Meme #10
Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! We’re pleased that you’re expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.
Remember that Reserves will open on April 17th, and Applications on April 24th!
Two important notes:
Remember that Reserves will open on April 17th, and Applications on April 24th!
1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which exists apart from the real world and possesses a dream-like quality that characters are innately aware of from the moment they appear on its shores. No need to panic or fret. Dreams are odd things, after all - and anything can happen in them. Why would anyone question where their mind chooses to wander in its sleep?
2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but can be accepted as game canon as well. In fact, certain choices your character makes in Mu have the potential to bear in-game consequences, largely in the form of test drive reward items.
Friends on the Other Side
When you open your eyes, it is to a shadow-tinted cityscape. The buildings are clay-built and colorless, plunging seemingly infinitely onward into the sky before disappearing into a dense pool of foglike sky. The silence weighs heavily like a mantle across every inch of this place, and no matter how you squint at them, every structure seems strangely blurred, as though being viewed through distorted telescope lens, or in the reflection of a pool of water.
All told, it's probably obvious from the start that all is not well here.
That wouldn't be a problem, perhaps, if you were alone. Mu does not boast a great deal of flora and fauna, but what it does have is a creature capable of inflicting much in the way of misfortune - clockroach. They occupy this city in swarms of wraith-like wisps, both intangible and curiously amorphous. But when they draw close, they instill a sense of terror like no other, usually igniting one's fight-or-flight response as a result. Sure, they might not be capable of actually hurting you, but why should that matter, when they have a skill for inducing a sense of utter dread in their targets?
Ever try to get some sleep with fresh adrenaline pumping in your veins?
Pretty Fly for a...Fire Guy
With indigo-blue skies, lush fields of green, and miles of rippling grass hills for as far as the eye can see, Mu has cast you into the perfect and picturesque evening. As the imaginary sun lips the very edge of the horizon and the last glow of orange fades to the purple of dusk, the fields come to life with a smattering of bright, wavering lights.
While they glow a contented amber by default, those that fireflies warm to will find themselves bathed in a green-blue glow as those bulbous, organic lanterns tint with a soft, cool turquoise. A few of them might even settle across your arms and in your hair, if they take that much of a shine to you.
Of course, those the fireflies don't warm to will be able to note as such when they light up a blazing crimson, mere seconds before the insects spit a stream of glowing orange, molten-colored acid. It stings and burns in equal measure, just as likely to scald you as it is to set the surrounding fields aflame.
Flower You Doing That?
Adventurers were both wary and relieved to discover that the next island on the horizon, known as Ziziphus, appeared to be a rather vegetation-rich paradise. They were considerably less relieved to learn that this island contained predators just like all the rest of them, despite the rich green backdrop of its meadows and the promise of lush woodland at its heart.
So it is that you, too, will learn that sometimes tufts of ferns are not tufts of ferns at all...but dangerous creatures called spindlanks.
For despite their leafy appearance, spindlanks are very much carnivorous. Their size can vary from anywhere between six and ten feet tall when their appendages unfurl entirely. They burn as easily as any plant matter would, but the size of them can make them quite difficult to topple alone.
And they are almost always hungry.
leonardo // tmnt 2003
The lucky thing is, he's been through this whole song and dance before.]
[It's different, he supposes, when the demons you face are of your own making; when the faceless horrors have faces, carved into bloody templates, with unseeing eyes and the hiss of your failure leaving one final time through their teeth. Those fears are intelligent. They claw their way out from a disturbed soul, an unsettled one; a soul with the capacity to lose things.]
[This fear that runs in his heartbeat now is a primal thing. Hindbrain instinct, blowing his pupils wide and transforming his insides into white noise. It's the fight-or-flight response of his body attempting to dominate his mind. Frankly, he's insulted. As Donatello would probably say, they didn't mutate from a byproduct of the multiverse's most advanced scientific community just so they could submit to hindbrain.]
[Either way, Leonardo's response to fear has always been the exact same.]
[The cityscape is unfamiliar, but it's still a city. The soporific effect is powerful, but he's weathered worse exhaustions. Tranquil, guarded, Leonardo can be found gliding through a kata on the rooftops; moving through the fog-colored shadows of buildings; maybe he suddenly freezes and looks off in a direction, pelting away without another word.]
[Or maybe he finds several moments when the swarm finds him, in all of his dogged calmness, and he's forced to draw his sword through a rapidly clouding mind.]
Whoa!
[Okay, New York City bugs can be pretty impressive, but none of them spit acid at him before. Well, they did, but not the un-mutated ones at least. Leonardo snatches his arm back abruptly from the arc of caustic spit, blinking owlishly and backing up a pace or two, fireflies scattering from across his shell.]
Okay, note to self... Raph might be onto something.
["I hate bugs," Raph's voice complains loudly and helpfully in his head. Thanks, Raph. Leo sighs and brushes it away, gently sweeping his fingers over his arm to shoo away some of the buzzing fireflies settled there.]
Guess I'd better find him before he finds these little guys.
[He doesn't have to think too hard about this one.]
[Some giant creature wants to eat him? It must be Tuesday. Slashing at a vine that curls around his ankle, Leonardo wonders if this is some sort of karmic punishment for always badgering his brothers to eat more vegetables. Ha ha, Mikey. You can come out of the costume now, and leave his ankles alone.]
[No such luck. Gritting his teeth, Leo dives behind a tree and ducks just as a root comes whipping over his head, crashing into the trunk. He springs up, using the root as a foothold to launch himself into the branches of the tree and scurry for higher ground. If he can get a better angle on this thing, all the more helpful in not becoming its dinner.]
[He's never eating another salad again.]
ii.
She rubs her nose with a paw after giving it a good lick, ears folded flat against her skull and tail tucked between her legs. Honestly? Getting lost and burned by a bug in the same day? Talk about bad luck. Nothing here smells or looks familiar, either. She can't find any trails to follow and the stars even seem different. It's like the circle up life became a triangle or something and man, oh man, she is DONE with it.]
Ugh, the sooner I get back home, the better...
no subject
[You know what, he's dealt with weirder. Kind of.]
[Leo hesitates anyway, not entirely sure what to make of this. Acid-spitting fireflies are one thing, but a talking hyena with a slightly singed nose is another thing entirely. Is she a spirit, maybe? he tries to think of any deity he's familiar with that uses a hyena as an avatar, but... he's not really coming up with anything. Something in Egyptian mythology, maybe, but Egypt tends to shy away from this whole 'tropical island' motif.]
[Awkwardly, he clears his throat, which causes another small flurry of fireflies to float away from him.]
Uh... hello... there. Are you all right?
no subject
...Yet. Because the moment she catches wind of a voice nearby, Jasiri lifts her ears up and turns her head to see who's there. And she was certainly not expecting a...whatever the heck Leonardo even is. There's a very distinct yelp as the little hyena plants her backside onto the ground and tries to make herself appear smaller than she is. Because by the Savannah, that is the weirdest looking animal she has ever seen. I-It's like a weird crocodile...turtle...mandrill hybrid. Or something.
She gives him another long look, eyes darting to and fro before she swipes her tongue over her lips and clears her throat. Right. Yes. She has to be fearless - she's not some shivering little cub, even if this...whatever it is is much larger and far more bizarre than anything else. Gosh, if she's actually discovered the Zimwe, she's going to turn tail and hike it back into that bush - the bugs are better than the stories she's heard of that monstrosity.]
Who...m-me?
the most Unfitting song came up on spotify shuffle while i was writing this
Then again, Donn has goat horns and goat legs and even a little goat tail, without even the vaguest suggestion of clothes to his name, so he supposes that he shouldn't judge. And this was just a dream anyway; he's sure of it. That said — and yeah, trying to overthink a dream was pretty silly, but — maybe this was his brain reminding him in a bizarre, roundabout way of that old folklore tale? The one about how it was a giant turtle, bigger than the sun, who sicked up the universe and everything in it. That had always been his favorite of the creation myths spun out into bedtime stories, by a patient father who, looking back, had probably forgotten half of whatever the village elder said and made up the rest as he went along.
Or maybe that had nothing to do with this. But. The point is that while this dream has been incredibly pleasant so far, it could surely only get better with somebody else to talk to! Even if they were just a figment of his imagination that made no sense. So determined, Donn steps out of the flickering shadows behind Leo with an open smile and a light heart, fireflies nestled comfortably in his hair and along the bare line of his shoulders. Their green-blue glow holds steady with each step of his hooves, perfectly calm despite the movement and noise.]
Hi!
[Good start? Great start! He points at a few more fireflies clinging to Leo's shell, scuttling determinedly out of reach of the turtle's fingers.]
Need some help shooing those little guys away? They seem to like me, so....you know! I bet I can get them to move without spitting that burning stuff everywhere.
was it all star
[For a few beats, the offer doesn't even register. Leonardo blinks slowly at Donn, processing his goat-like appearance and equating it to at least a dozen different things, both mythological and xenological. It might almost be comical, even, the way his eye ridges slowly rise as he takes in the fireflies glimmering in Donn's hair like blinking little hairclips.]
[A spirit, surely. Why he's taken the form of a goat... Leonardo isn't going to try and figure out. Instead, he cranes his neck to look over his shoulder at the fireflies remaining on his shell. Whoops. Hopefully he didn't just offend some kind of keeper of this strange, dreamlike domain.]
Are they... yours?
maybe
[What an interesting question! Donn can't help but laugh a little, soft and non-judgmental, into one of his scarred hands. The other reaches up to his hair, coaxing a few fireflies onto his fingers and giving them a fond smile before gently shooing them off into the night air. Incredibly enough, they go quietly, never losing their serene blue-green glow.]
No, not at all. But I guess you could say....I have a way with creatures like these? So I'm sure it'll be fine.
[He's so used to being stared at, outside of dreams and outside of sleep, that the raised eye-ridges and stunned expression barely register. It'd be stranger still to be looked at like he was some measure of "normal", even as part of a fantasy.]