aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 027 )

Test Drive Meme #27

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.

In conjunction with our monthly Test Drive Meme, Reserves are now open! Applications will open on September 24th!

Two important notes:

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.

Eye of the Storm
Unlike the calmer waters of other dreams, this particular one is in a frenzy of activity. The sea thrashes and roars and crawls hungrily up the shores of the unassuming island upon which you've found yourself; it assumes the shapes of tridents, swords and, most notably, the snapping heads of serpents.

The sea isn't acting rough for no reason, it turns out. Right now, it's seething in conflict with torrents of fire that seem to have, however improbably, assumed the shape of a three-headed dragon. Whether the serpent is simply coated in fire or it is fire isn't clear. You don't really need to know the specifics. All you need to know is that, at present, there are two dragons furiously crashing against one another in a dichotomy of fire and water. They issue rushing plumes of steam whenever they connect, scourging deep furrows into the earth.

Adventurers will find themselves thrust into a veritable maelstrom of conflict upon waking. Unlike the case in the waking world, everything is simply too indistinct to grasp or engage with in all but the most oblique manner. All you can do is hold on and try not to get lost - or separated - in these new, wild conditions, and seek shelter as these two behemoths ruthlessly duke it out.

The clash of the elements isn't the only thing you have to worry about, either. Little tails of fire and water will occasionally unspool from the giant wyrms and decide they want a taste of something with a little more body. Though their shapes are indistinct due to their elemental makeup, it will still be evident that these are smaller dragons with a taste for destruction. You can dispel them easily enough, and largely through application of common sense - flame-dragons can be reduced to steam by water or blasts of cold air, and water-dragons can be vaporized by heat and fire - but there happens to be a lot of them, and not very many of you.

There is shelter, however, as a respite from all this. Ruined buildings dot the landscape, impervious to both the water and fire and surrounded by a sense of eerie calm. Though they're long abandoned, as long as you hide in such ruins, nothing can touch you there. Not even the smaller, scuttling dragons can breach those walls, held back by whatever unique arcane constraint lives in the smooth, cool stone.

All you have to do is reach one.

Echoes of the Past
Don't be alarmed if you find yourself waking on the floor of a ruined house in a ruined city on a deserted island. Don't be alarmed, either, if it looks like the edges and corners of most of these buildings, built of simple stone and clay and mortar, look as though they have sustained an awful lot of fire damage in the past. That doesn't have to mean anything, you see.

The houses and buildings here are of an unknown purpose, but the signs of civilization are writ large in stone and on the landscape. And yet, no matter how much you might search, there doesn't seem to be anyone else around.. Abandoned and broken, exposed to the elements without proper care, it's clear that the inhabitants of these places are long, long gone.

Wandering between the buildings will certainly help avoid the heat of the day, and as the day winds on, some thought might be put into gathering the necessities to make it through the night - water from barely recognizable wells, or vegetables scavenged from overgrown gardens that have long since abandoned any semblance of order or restriction.

Still, even devoid of their original owners, the contents of those broken structures might well be interesting in their displays of lives left behind. The blocky, square buildings show a sense of efficiency over articulation, with ornate mosaics carved into the walls as a sense of decor. You might even find piles of strange, smooth stones with speckled patterns decorating their exterior, hard as rock and curiously similar in size. Their function can only be guessed at, but they're quite heavy.

...at least, until they shudder and start to crack beneath the pressure of something moving around...inside of them?

Give it five minutes to an hour, and those stones will prove to not really be stones at all, but eggs. To be specific...?

They contain these little guys. Tiny, baby dragons, newly hatched and eager to imprint upon the first venturing hand to give them the time of day. They can vary in size from barely nine inches in length to just over two feet, and their coloration can be just as diverse. However, it will become clear within mere minutes of meeting your new, scaly charge that they're just the same as any other baby animal: they're needy, demanding, curious, and hungry.

It's advised you go looking around for something to feed them. These dragons are omnivorous creatures, and will eat anything from berries to meat, but either way, they're going to be looking to you to care for them.

A warm congratulations to an unsuspecting parent may very well be in order.

The Sound of Sirens
The idyllic setting of a tropical island might seem perfect for a vacation getaway...or it would be, if this place weren't populated. You aren't here for very long before you hear it - a loud, shrieking siren, shrilling out over the trees. And then another. And another. And another...

Followed by the sound of gunshots.

It turns out you're not in a happy little island getaway at all, but in the middle of a turf war. Stay in one place too long, and you'll realize that you can start to make out blurred, shadowy silhouettes crouched in the underbrush and huddled behind boulders, issuing indistinct shouts as they charge one another with spears and harpoons, or shoot explosive bursts of scattered buckshot with rudimentary firearms.

At first, these shapes merely pass through you. You are but a spectral spectator, lingering on proceedings far removed from you. But as the conflict escalates, you'll find that you're not as immune to this as you might have first thought. The shapes start to sharpen, and before you know it, you'll start to feel those weapons piercing you for real - and they will hurt just the same, too.

But getting caught in the crossfire isn't the worst thing that could happen to you - oh, no. See, if you're not careful, you might find yourself wanting to join them. It might start as a small ember in the pit of your gut - this feeling of displaced upset, that one side of this shadowy war has truly and personally wronged you. Or it might be out of self-preservation, because someone shot you or stabbed you and it hurt, and before you know it, one of the dark, featureless shapes is handing you a weapon for you to pay them back in kind.

There are ways to break out of this, of course. A good shock is all it takes to jolt you back to your senses, though it won't render you immune to the effects of this battle. You'll still have to figure out how to get out of this mess without getting shot or blasted or bled out onto the floor.

Or maybe you can embrace the chaos instead, and decide to wreak a little havoc on the other side. Who are they? Doesn't matter! They're not one of you, so you can make them suffer to the fullest extent, right? Besides, who knows how they might take it if you try to disengage entirely?

One thing is for certain - you won't be getting away from this conflict and out of the battlefield without a fight.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Biiiig family, sounds like.

[They're not really fussed about that, but they're also assuming he means figurative brothers. Like, you know, a roving band of outlaws that travels together - they're family, by design. They just don't think of asking for clarification because they're dumb as rocks and still kind of think he's from the same kind of universe as them.]

And you all live in Japan? So what're you doing here?

[ Eight people stuck in a showa-era small house that gets regularly destroys more time than one would count. A big family indeed.

He gives an ultimately dismissive shrug at their query, though. ]

Same reason why you're here, probably? I totally have no idea! Some god or whatever else's running this world wanted me here, so now I'm here!

You think this is the Witch's doing?

["God" - the Witch, that's their assumption. Gotta be, right? There's only so many gods in the desert, and the Witch is where Vamos places most of their faith. Doesn't make much sense, though. Doesn't read like Her style. They're not dead, either one of them, right?]

I never heard of a Witch being able to do any of that!

[ His vague knowledge about witches tells him that they tend to rather just throw curses at people than yeeting them straight into a nightmarish apocalyptic world. ]

I mean, She can steal people's souls, so who knows what else She can do?

[The Witch is basically a god, in the eyes of a zone rat like Vamos. They also kind of assume that everyone's familiar with her, despite knowing that this guy is clearly from Japan and not the post-apocalyptic deserts of California.]

[ Indeed, he's squinting his eyes hard at them because he absolutely has no idea what they're talking about. ]

Never heard of a Witch doing that, either! Actually, I don't even know what this Witch is!

You know? The Phoenix Witch?

[Not everyone is hip to your Zone lingo, Vamos. They also find themself at a relative loss as to how best to describe Her, opening their hands and gesturing at either side of their head without much direction.]

Her?

[ ............. ]

... nnnnnnnnnnope!

[ And he shakes his head. Just to make sure they understand. Hopefully. ]

[Vamos looks, for half a minute, aghast. Then they shake their head in something that couldn't really be called "horror," which implies a great deal more investment in the mortality of people they don't know than they're really capable of expressing, but is nonetheless sufficiently spooked.]

Geez. What do you guys do after you die in Japan?

I told you! We go to Hell and get tortured and all that stuff because we were bad in life!

[ He misses the detail that he's still alive despite everything, but even so they might not understand the very concept of "it's a gag anime so death doesn't matter". ]

How is that different from here?

[This is like, pretty much hell already, right? Nothing to do, lots of fire and water and shit...that's pretty hellish, right?]

It's all red and gloomy... but here things look way cooler! I mean, you say that, right?

[ He frantically flaps his sleeve towards where the battle is probably still raging on. ]

There's water, I guess. That's already way better than the Zones.

[It's salt water, probably. Ocean water. God, what a concept. So much water for miles that you can't even see the end of it.]

There's water and fire! [ He beams! ] It's like watching fireworks but you can get soaked and also it lasts forever?

[ How long have those two gone after each other's throats now... ]

Fire's easy. You can get fire anywhere.

[Like, just look up into the sky, right? Sun's right there. That counts as fire, totally.]

Whatever the hell's going on out there doesn't sound like it's gonna stop anytime soon. [Vamos sighs, maybe a shade theatrically.] God, and I'm already so bored.

[ Jyushimatsu largely shrugs his shoulders, choosing to passively agree. He also decides to screw cleanliness and lay down on the grimy floor, sprawled like a dead fish and looking up the ceiling. ]

If it's boring, then we should sleep! [ There's so much noise outside but even explosion wouldn't move him once he dozes off. ]

[Sleeping through constant noise is, fortunately, something of an acquired skill when you're from the Zones. Vamos's nose wrinkles slightly.]

I feel like I was already asleep. But, like, I'm not...I guess? This feels weird. Like a dream.

I think this is a dream! Maaaybe if we sleep now, we'll wake up in our homes again?

[ A helpless, but entertained shrug. No harm in trying, right? ]

Ughhhhhhhh.

[It's hard to tell what's really bothering them - the fact that there's no real conclusive answer to this, or the fact that waking up back home would mean waking back on the shit-is-constantly-on-fire hell that is the Zones. But, on the plus side, they'll be able to see Vaya again. Soooo...]

You really think that'll work?

[ Helpless, mindless shrug. ]

Who knows! But it's worth trying, right? I mean, I think you also need a nap! Dream about your friend a lot and maybe you'll see them again when you wake up!

[Mngn. It doesn't sound like much more than a hunch...but a hunch will have to do. They don't like being solo. They're not supposed to run solo. Ultra-V's roll together, especially Vaya and Vamos.]

Yeah. Yeah, okay. They've gotta be around here somewhere, and if they're not, it's because I just gotta wake up and find 'em again! Yeah.

Yeah! You got it! Yeah!

[ He needlessly pumps his arms up to the ceiling. Then... he falls back with a loud thump, and closes his eyes, smiling wide despite the loud chaos outside. ]

Goodnight Vamos! Let's meet again in a better dream!

Yeah...yeah! [If they sound like they're bolstering themself gamely for something that doesn't have a guaranteed result, that's exactly what they're doing.] You're all right, yellow guy.

I'll, uh...yeah. I'll see you.

[Probably not.]

[But they shut their eyes and make a good effort to fall asleep anyway.]

[ Well, that's it. As soon as he closes his eyes, Jyushimatsu instantly falls asleep.

His peace will last until he opens his eyes to find himself in hell island. ]

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 027 )

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