TDM - OCTOBER 2020

[robbies]

TEST DRIVE MEME - OCTOBER 2020

Everyone's entitled to one good scare.
CW: Violence, death, mouth trauma, vomiting, needles, razors

---

“Help me. Please, help me…”

A child’s voice, calling out for aid. There’s no rhyme or reason for when it comes to you. It’s so quiet, a whisper in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind. Were it not for the sharp, stabbing pain it pulls out of you, you could ignore it. You could even pretend it’s just your imagination.

It all happens so quickly and powerfully. Left in the dust, your brain struggles to process it all. Blacking out is the least it can do, but it’s also all it can do, and it does so before you even have a chance to fully register just how young the voice is, and how deeply, heartbreakingly lost it sounds.

When you finally awaken with your bare feet tangled in soft sheets, a layer of fuzzy fleece or slinky silk clinging to your body like another layer of skin, the sunlight pouring in from the window next to your bed momentarily blinding you, and the cries of happy children playing baseball outside of it carrying faintly, it all becomes very clear—

Something is horribly wrong.

---

OCTOBER 1st.

It becomes very clear very quickly that this isn’t a simple kidnapping. If you’re twenty years old or older, the bedroom you wake up in is very clearly a couple’s bedroom — with separate beds like a modest, modern couple of course! A similarly lost and confused stranger is in the other. They are your counterpart, for everything in this room has a matching counterpart — the nightstand and lamp each of you have beside your beds, the framed pictures on the wall, even your pajamas. If you’re under twenty years old, your room is smaller but more personalized, filled with comic books, model kits, stray baseball cards littered around the floor. Dolls, fashion magazines of people dressed from a bygone era, stacks of vinyl records neatly arranged next to a record player. And then there are the pictures. They’re everywhere in the house — in a frame on your nightstand, hung on the walls, stuck in the photo albums and scrapbooks lying on your desk or tucked away in drawers. Here you are on your wedding day, exchanging vows with your partner. Here’s you sitting in a fishing boat with one of the younger members of your house. Here’s a picture of you at ten years old getting ready for the first day of school. All of the photographs are aged, sepia, even yellowed and dusty in frames hung for a long, long time. By the time you make it down to the living room, you’ll notice that the television is on; someone must have forgotten to turn it off before they went to bed. On it, a cartoon pack of cigarettes and accompanying cigarette dancers prance around a black and white pumpkin patch, joined by dancing skeletons, ghosts and witches as a cheerful little earworm blares: ”Thirty days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, thirty days til Halloween—“

---

GETTING TO KNOW THE NEIGHBORS.

As you get acclimated, you gradually begin to learn more about this strange new world you’ve found yourself in. You’re in a neighborhood on the east side of a town called Santa Rosita located… somewhere in California (wherever or whatever that might be). The year is 1961. If it wasn’t clear enough, your neighbors are more than willing to humor you if you ask. Even if you accost them with questions and demands. Sure, you and your family are a little kooky, and you have a very overactive imagination, but the key to any good joke is playing along! And how could something like “I’m from the future, from another world” be anything but a joke? A. AUNT MYRNA'S PARTY CHEESE SALAD. Over the course of the week, your neighbors will come by unannounced, each with a new homecooked meal to welcome you to their cozy little side of town. Meatloaf, potato salad, lamb chops. Gelatin molds — lots of gelatin molds. Someone even comes by to drop off a gelatinous yellow lump of pineapple, green peppers, celery and yellow cheese swimming in a soupy mixture of sour and whipped cream. “It’s my aunt Myrna’s recipe!” they gush once they drop the casserole tin into your hands, proceeding to rattle off every ingredient. Well, at least you won’t be starving anytime soon. When you bring it back in to your kitchen - and its cheery wallpaper and its floral patterned Pyrex dishware, you and your new...family(?) all stare at the cheese salad, the gelatin, the curiously frosted meatloaf spread. A smorgasbord courtesy of the insistent generosity! Who will take the first bite?

B. DON'T BE A SQUARE!

You can only avoid the cheer and the neighbors for so long, even as you sit inside enjoying all the amenities of your new home. The television can only turn its volume up to five, after all! One bright and sunny Saturday, the weather crisp and clear, news broadcasts and reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show are drowned out by the music in the neighborhood. Eventually it’s too much to bear — you simply must put on your shoes and go discover the source of that infernal racket.

Why, it’s the block party! Haven’t you seen the invitation — with instructions — sitting in your mailbox, silly? Wear a badge so everyone on the block can know you’re new and welcome you to their extended family!

Well! Each neighbor was supposed to set up a table with snacks and drinks and entertainment on their front lawn. Carter Mayhew, one of your Robbie neighbors, has a whole ring toss obstacle course set up for boys to play with, and his wife is cheerfully and blandly instructing a group of girls on jump rope rhymes. Colorful streamers hang from every lamppost and mailbox, balloons and party favors galore. Like you, there are even a few newcomers to Santa Rosita that are caught just as unaware of this event — though others are being welcomed in by husbands and wives and children, caught in conversations about building decks and the upcoming Halloween festivities.

Before you can decide if returning home or joining the party is your choice, a plate with chips and dips and yes, more gelatin is shoved into your hands and a party hat snapped on to your head.

“The guest of honor has arrived! Come and meet your neighbors, neighbor!”

---

THROUGHOUT OCTOBER.

Life falls into a peaceful haze for the next several days. Dull, unassuming, tranquil. As the month drags on, the spirit of Halloween begins to manifest in Santa Rosita, from the pumpkins people start putting out on their doorsteps to the smiling faces of paper skeletons pressed against their windows. And then, towards the end of the month, something terrible happens. You hear it first through word of mouth, rippling through Santa Rosita like a wave, dark murmurs accompanied by sad sighs and downturned eyes. Soon, you start to read about it. Grim business, they say. A tragedy. How could something like this happen. People stop talking about it by the end of the week. Best just to forget about it. Every day, that cigarette commercial comes on. It’s impossible to escape it. And every day, the number of days in the song changes, counting down. ”Thirteen days till Halloween—” “Eight more days til Halloween—” “Three more days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween…”

---

HALLOWEEN.

CW: Violence, death, mouth trauma, vomiting, needles, razors

October 31st. It sneaks up on you whether you like it or not. When dawn breaks on Halloween day, things are as serene as they’ve ever been as men do yard work, raking leaves as their wives bake fresh pie and cookies in the house, the spicy scent of cinnamon, apple and pumpkin wafting through the neighborhood on chilly October wind. There’s a smile on every child’s face as they skip off the school bus in the afternoon, running into their houses to get their costumes ready. As it begins to get dark, the residents of Santa Rosita start lighting their jack-o-lanterns. One by one, little balls of light flicker to life on every porch and doorstep, jagged smiles grinning in the dark. For the entire night, nobody blows the candle inside their pumpkins out. It’s a tradition, a very old one, and traditions are just another way of saying rules. And Halloween in Santa Rosita, as it turns out, lives and dies by the rules.

A. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR CANDY.

Halloween isn’t just for the kids, although they certainly make up the bulk of who you’ll see out and about on the streets. Walking through Santa Rosita, your neighbors are as generous with handing out treats as they are with handing out gelatin molds and pot roasts, and they don’t discriminate. Adults are received just as warmly as children; the worst one can expect is a quirked eyebrow if they show up to a house without a costume.

Apples, packs of gum, homemade cookies. Chocolate bars, nickels, popcorn balls. Your neighbors hand out all sorts of treats, most of them homemade. The Robbies are no exception, and it’s their treats that seem a bit more high quality than most, some of the candy they hand out being obviously expensive, brand names. The good stuff. They drop each treat into your bag with those same pleasant, mild expressions and too-tight smiles you’ve grown used to in your short time here.

Eventually, as everyone winds up doing at some point in the night, you decide to start digging into your treat bag to sample some of your well-earned goods — maybe in the comfort of your home, maybe outside on the streets. And that’s when the fun begins.

Maybe you bite into metal, the razor sharp end of a blade embedded into the apple or candy bar you’ve picked out burying itself in your gums, or splitting your tongue. Maybe it’s a needle, impaling itself straight through the roof of your mouth or a cheek. Or maybe it’s nothing that obvious. Maybe the realization that something is wrong comes moments after you’ve devoured that chocolate bar or cookie, the bitter aftertaste of rat poison hitting the back of your throat along with bile and the rest of the contents of your stomach as they rise up and out of your mouth.

Or maybe you’ll bite into plain, sweet chocolate or fresh fruit. That’s also part of the surprise. You really don’t know what you’ll get until you start eating.

B. ALWAYS RESPECT THE DEAD.

At ten o’clock, all the television sets in the neighborhood turn on, blaring to life right in the middle of that omnipresent cigarette commercial. The volume begins to rise of its own accord as your television starts to pick up interference, bursts of static squealing amidst the rising, screaming chorus of ”HAPPY HAPPY HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN!”

Breaking through the static, garbled and tinny, a child’s voice cries out.

“Can’t— I can’t hold them— back— Pumpkin— don’t blow the— out—”

And just as quickly as it cut in, the voice cuts back out. Commercial jingle notwithstanding, you’re alone once more. But not for long.

The doorbell rings. You can see them outside from your window: costumed children. Their masks and clothes are grimy and ragged from the muddy, slimy water they’ve been decomposing in for over a week. When they come to your door, squelching wetly as they shamble up the porch steps, they ring the bell or knock, as all polite children do. If you don’t let them in, they’ll find their own way, always by force. And once they find you, all they can gurgle in their reedy, waterlogged voices is, ”Trick or treat.”

From there, they attack.

With superhuman strength and speed, they tear and rip at anything they can get their hands on — clothing, skin, muscle, face, eyes. Being short and small, despite their strength, they're at a distinct disadvantage. They can even be thrown off, with some effort. But they don’t stay down for long, and attempting to hurt or mortally wound them only stalls them for a few moments, if that. How can you kill something that’s already dead?

Some in the neighborhood are willing to try and find out.

The only houses they seem to ignore completely are the ones with lit jack-o-lanterns still outside. They’ll loiter outside these houses, staring straight ahead at your door or window like they can see exactly where you are. But sooner or later, they’ll pass by and move onto the next house.

As long as the candles in carved pumpkins stay lit.

---

OOC INFO

Hello, and welcome to We're Still Here's first TDM! Here's a few things we'd like you to keep in mind:

The TDM is canon. You can treat this as the game's first real event and pick and choose what threads you would like your character to remember when they enter the game. For characters who app into the game, the events of the TDM will be treated like a dream. Upon awakening from it, characters will find that time has jumped ahead to December 1st. You may also feel free to use similar reality and/or time distortions to explain why the family members your characters have in the TDM aren't the same as the ones they may be assigned to in the game proper.

If you would like to have Halloween content in your relaxed housing prompts, please feel free! You are not beholden to follow our prompts exactly so long as the spirit is maintained.

There is no Network prompt listed, but feel free to wildcard one for your characters anyway.

Although the TDM is canon in the sense that characters are free to remember its events when they app into the game, it does not count as an official plot heavy event, meaning that characters will not receive regains from participating in it.

With regards to the dead trick-or-treaters: you may NPC them however you'd like, but keep the details we've listed in their prompt in mind. They are supernaturally fast and strong, will ignore houses as long as they have a lit pumpkin on the porch outside, and will try to enter each house the moment the candle in the pumpkin goes out. Additionally, they can't be killed, but they can be momentarily stalled by injuring them. By November 1st, 6AM, they will disappear the moment the sun comes out.

---

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Comments

heero yuy | gundam wing

[heeroism]

❅ home is where the heart is;
or, 'being a teenager in the sixties'.

﹙ consciousness comes in like a frost. he wakes without moving, barely a flicker in his heartrate to denote the transition. he hears a clock. the far-off bark of a dog. the hvac system of a residential house. water knocking in the pipes. he's alone, or at least he can't hear anyone with him and so after his initial assessment, he opens his eyes.

he's accustomed to the disorientation of waking somewhere unexpected, but generally it's — a facility, a cell, a hospital. not a bedroom. certainly not a child's bedroom. he rises. swings his legs to the side of the bed, listens for the distant, far-away sounds of footsteps. when none resound, he proceeds to sack the bedroom.

and then, upon finding nothing of note, he heads down to the kitchen. the eerie silence, the emptiness — it reminds him of a nuclear test site. he half-expects mannequins to occupy windows, cardstock houses to be blown over in a fell wind. he shakes down the kitchen and as soon as he hefts a kitchen knife he finds himself interrupted. a housemate? a 'family' member? some errant passer-by? hard to say. either way, heero doesn't set the knife aside or look at all abashed at being caught out. instead: ﹚

I'd mind the coffee if I were you. Good chance it's poisoned.

﹙ in case this is your first kidnapping. he's here to help. ﹚

don't be a square;
alternately, try a trapezoid.

﹙ he isn't personable, but he can pretend it well enough. it's like any other reconnoitering he's ever done — cut-off from his allies, with limited intelligence on the region.

he gains a reputation as a politely distant boy, largely preferring to be silent. when he engages with others it's nearly always adults, who he questions (read: interrogates) about local politics, foreign policy, talk of the vietnam war that america hasn't yet troubled itself to enter and all manner of things that don't seem to suit a normal teen.

when it comes to the gelatin mold, well. roughly ten seconds after it's been put in his hands, he dumps the plate directly into yours. if your character happens not to take it it's getting dropped square on the ground. ﹚

Here. You look hungry.

﹙ do you, though? or is he just not about to eat this crap? you decide. ﹚

spooky scary skeletons;
or, when tots attack, prompt b, cw for violence against zombie kids.
option 1.

﹙ he'd meant it, when he dropped that empty gun deep in the bowels of mariemaia's palatial shelter. he doesn't want to kill. he won't.

but children who smell like death, who clamber forwards over the bodies of others and their fellows, whose skin sloughs off like wet paper, like napalm burns, don't count. the first time he watches another one of them drag someone out into the street it spurs him to action. he cracks apart a nearby chair, passes out the resultant sturdy clubs to anyone holed up with him. ﹚

Stay calm. It doesn't help anyone to panic. Have you done anything like this before?

﹙ his tone is... some species of reassuring, at least. ﹚

option 2.

﹙ he notices patterns, is quick to make assessments. by teh time the second house with no visible pumpkins lit and glowing on the porch gets overrun, he's realized that the message meant they shouldn't let them become extinguished.

but the last one at your house just went out.

he doesn't really think about it. just grabs one off his porch, arm curled around it protectively to shield the light from the wind, and bolts to your house. give him a few seconds, and he'll be banging on your door. ﹚

Open up!

﹙ assumed family is a+, he's 18. toss me a pm if you want to suss anything out! ﹚

not being a square YOU SAW NOTHING

[combatted]

[ Different from any of the Wayne galas, where the benefit of the shadow the name cast would mean quick exits if he wanted it, studying the crowd, eavesdropping, bearing the spotlight when it came over to him, in the early days. The suits had taken residence in his closet, there'd been fun, in it, when it could have been remembered as an adventure. ]

[ But there hasn't been cause for mingling in well over a year, and he'd only just gotten rid of the cakes the neighbour kept giving him ("You're so thin, dear!") when more gets piled onto his plate. He swallows the look; he's not eating this crap, it's probably poisoned or causes more of this hallucination. ]

Not much of a sweet tooth?

i am the all-seeing, the all-knowing and lbr a nicky is fine too.

[heeroism]

Hmn.

﹙ it's an agreeable noise, left open to interpretation. he may as well have said believe what you want. the truth is, heero doesn't care — food is food. he's survived on worse in the colonies and on earth. gone hungry for days, after odin died. how you survive matters less than the fact you do.

but there are some lines he's learning to draw for himself. apparently, pieces of hotdog and celery, bits of whisked egg suspended in gelatin, slathered in sour cream is one of them. heero doesn't actually look at dick, but keeps his attention on the party. alert. attentive. he's never bothered to carry himself as anything less a soldier. ﹚

I'm allergic.

﹙ to... what? he doesn't plan on specifying. he knows what things most people will pry at, and which ones they won't. ﹚

[combatted]

[ — Allergic to what, exactly. It's a perfect excuse, reasonable, polite even. Dick stares at the monstrosity on the plate, feeling it judge him. ]

I understand.

[ He might've used it himself. Dick's thus far just dodged well, only a few hits of desserts from the older aunties. Nothing that he'd have to sit down to eat, or take up to the small groups of conversations that have been taking place. Nothing's happening here, nothing but everything ordinary, and that's what's been simmering quietly, where Dick keeps it. ]

Well, I just ate.

[ l o l ]

[heeroism]

﹙ heero's attention flickers back to dick for the first time, and he folds his arms. his gaze is unerring, sharp for a boy of eighteen. ﹚

It's your problem now.

﹙ 'too bad'. he has washed his metaphoric hands of it. whatever dick chooses to do with it at this point is his business. throw it out, feed it to the dog, whatever. ﹚

[combatted]

[ The study should make him uncomfortable, but it's the first dose of any familiarity Dick has had since waking up. Sharp as a whip, not any point of weakness he can see on the surface. Except to those silent things that bind anyone who watches a crowd, who knows the exact span of the space between the two of them, how long it would take to close the distance, to strike, disable (and to kill). ]

Yeah, I can see that.

[ His mouth pulls, despite himself. Dick reaches for a nearby table to set it down, intending to 'forget' about it. ]

What's your name?

[heeroism]

﹙ heero considers the question a moment longer than anyone accustomed to giving their real name ever would.

he'd considered going by a false name. but if this is a hallucination brought about by drugs or torture, whoever's running it likely already knows him. if it's genuine time travel, then heero yuy won't be born for almost three hundred years. wearing a dead man's name has been more curse than convenience, but it's still — his. he feels some small kinship to it. it's been what the precious few people in the universe he cares for have called him. his expression stays flat, but his attention does slide away again as if dragged by some invisible thing. the urge to keep a singular, immaculate awareness of his surroundings.

(he's carrying a kitchen knife beneath his jacket, tucked in the space between the outer shell and the liner, carefully wrapped. and it's only a knife because he couldn't find a gun.) ﹚

Heero. ﹙ which he does say as hiro. wry: ﹚ It's not very common around here.

﹙ it's almost a joke, if he were at all prone to making them. a japanese teenager in suburbanite, cold-war america where every third boy is named john or rob or dale stands out like a gundam in a wheat field. ﹚

[combatted]

[ Or just long enough for someone who's had to fight to keep an identity. Dick isn't Robin anymore, isn't sure he wants that back — he clung to it because it was all that had formed around him; a protective shell. Somewhere to go, to hide. It didn't matter much, who Dick Grayson was. Now, there is only, ]

I'm Dick.

[ He reserves the last name — it's his, but something else might crop up, some other new nightmare when he'd woken up in a house not his that had rooms for a family not his. ]

Let's walk around.

[ Less suspicious if they seem to be bonding, less likely to be accosted if so, as well — and he can leave this monstrosity behind them. ]

[heeroism]

﹙ he supposes he's meant to say, nice to meet you. it's what most adults expect. that deferential treatment. he has made a point of being polite more by dint of a lack of argument than an excess of manners, and so he doesn't bother.

when dick suggests they go for a walk, every hackle immediately goes up.

he knows that he's not the only one who woke up here, being welcomed into the neighborhood with all the friendliness of a cult. and he's learning how to pick out the other ones like him. the lack of the permanent, pained smile. speech that doesn't quite match the locale. different accent. different turns of phrase. vernacular that would have been out of place in the nineteen sixties. the less someone says jinkies or groovy the more likely they are to be another transplant. he's already willing to hedge his bets dick isn't one of them.

it's like being set-up with a sniper rifle. it's the glint of the scope that gives you away — and you have to be aware that sightlines work both ways. so. if dick isn't from around here, chances are he knows heero isn't either.

he doesn't want to think about people in black and white anymore. it isn't so simple as ally or enemy. but he's still not eager to trust. he tilts his chin up, a moment's defiance. ﹚

All right.

﹙ the why will follow. it doesn't need to be asked. he falls into step on dick's left side. statistically, most people are right-handed. if he's planning something — he's not any more likely to have obtained a gun than heero was — heero would prefer to know which side it's likely to come from. ﹚

[barbatosrex]

[ this is all clearly a dream, or some extended hallucination caused by, well. the brain damage the old man always warned him would come, if he kept pushing it with barbatos.

it's an okay dream. he knows this because he should be slumped on the floor like a broken doll, the entire right half of his body unresponsive. he remembers the look on orga's face.

but instead he's back to the much more minimal damage from Edmonton. his right eye blind, his right arm useless and bound in a makeshift sling, without the umbilical plug from barbatos. this is better, he supposes dubiously. hush and/or orga aren't around to carry him, so it's better that he can still walk on his own.

so it's an okay dream. he doesn't know anyone here, and nobody seems to recognize the names he asked about, once or twice. it's clearly earth. the people were able to confirm that, at least.

orga isn't here. barbatos isn't here. his gun isn't here. but there's food. lots of food? a suspicious amount of food.

he has somehow found himself the baggiest jacket possible. none of the people here seem to have whiskers, so he figured he'd better keep his spine covered. he probably stole the jacket. he probably stole the kneepads, too. the closest approximation he could get to his old tekkadan uniform. for once he's wearing pants that fit, although not for lack of trying to find anything else. he's still shorter than like. everyone.

he takes the plate being handed off to him without even blinking, although his brow furrows a little. and, horrifyingly, he takes a bite. ]

Do I?

[ look hungry, he means. his pockets are already stuffed with any kind of portable snacks he could snitch. ]

[heeroism]

﹙ you learn to look for people in borrowed clothing.

it's easy to pick out, well beyond any fashion or trend. things that are ill-fitting. off-colors. things that don't match, that look cobbled together. dirtier than a self-respecting suburbanite would wear. baggy clothing is a way to hide, but all the pockets on the boy's coat tug downwards beneath the gravity of all the things he's stuffed into them.

heero takes the boy's appearance in, and the fact that he opts to just dig into the gelatin with his hands cements his assumptions as at least somewhat based in fact in his mind. ﹚

Aren't you?

﹙ he says it mildly enough, but he's already brushing past the boy to one of those long tables set up, laden with various offerings from the neighbors. he picks up a fork from a mismatched pile of silverware obviously contributed by a mix of different households and then turns back to the kid to offer it out. ﹚

You should use a fork. People are going to stare.

[barbatosrex]

It's free food.

[ he says it like it should be obvious, that you never turn down free food. ]

Mm. They will anyway.

[ because of the arm. he's had several people cluck over it, all fabricating their own stories as to how he 'broke' it, even though it's in a fabric sling and not a cast. no one has actually asked? it's like they're happy to invent something and believe it, without any input from him. his eye must be a little less noticeable.

but he does take the fork, letting the plate balance precariously against his sling so he can use it. the fork... doesn't change the flavor, although his expression doesn't shift. he's eaten worse. ]

Why do you think they're giving us all this?

[ food, clothes. houses?????? ]

zamby kids 1

[marryonette]

[ It was probably for the best he was handing her an alternative weapon, because as excellent a shot she was, the pea-shooter bb guns she'd managed to get a hold of had basically no stopping power, least of all against zombies.

She took the bat, wincing just slightly at the idea of doing any more damage to the kids even IF they were undead monsters. But she had to keep others from being hurt, right? ]

Thanks! I'm used to being a lot better armed than this...

[ She was really missing her Valis guns. ]

Spooky scary skeletons, 1

[lookprofessor]

[This guy is unexpectedly calm. Luke should probably find it reassuring, but mostly it's sort of unnerving. Luke had chosen this house to hide in, primarily because it had seemed empty and he would've liked a chance to patch up the bleeding cut in his arm.

No such luck, then, as he takes the offered club that's...maybe three-quarters his size.

Heero. Do you really have to ask if the kid who is currently covered in mud and dirt, with a long cut over his arm and skinned knees, has done this before?]

No! [He inhales, deep, and tells himself to be calm. If he can act calm, it will be fine, right?] Have you?