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

[oldmanfive]

[ When she mentions the neighbors, he instantly frowns. Everything about those people remind him of the quiet before the storm in a horror movie. Straight out of Stepford Wives or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It sends a shiver down his spine, making him feel all the more anxious over their situation. ]

Yeah, we should probably try to humor those weirdoes a little more considering they have us outnumbered. [ Meaning he hasn't tried to kill any of them yet and has let them address him as though he really were a child. He hates it, but there are too many unknown factors to consider. Though he refuses to any of the Jell-O molds they try to offer to him. He doesn't plan on eating any food they offer him period.

At the mention of a voice, his head snaps up and his eyes slightly widen. He had heard a voice, but then he vaguely remembers...pain. ]

Yes, but then I felt like someone drove a spike into my brain and then I was waking up here.

[ Lightly he rubs a finger against his temple. What could it mean? ]

[monomachy]

[Now Diana frowns, then slowly shakes her head.] I think most of them don't mean us any harm. [Most, because there are a few she spoke with who... simply didn't seem right. Diana lived through the '60s, and is able to pick out the mannerisms of people from that time period. But a few of the townspeople are a little too well-mannered, and something about their unceasingly chipper demeanor makes her skin crawl. She amends:] But it isn't a bad idea to be on our guard. [Which doesn't seem like a strange thing to say to this boy, for some reason. Something about him, too, doesn't sit quite right, but not in a way that chills her blood. Just in a way that she can't pinpoint.]

As did I.

[The pain had gotten to her perhaps more than she'd like to admit. She isn't used to feeling pain, not physically. It might've all just been in her head, but it seemed to real for that.]

I think that if we find whoever was speaking to us, we'll find answers.

[It's the only lead she's got.]

[oldmanfive]

[ He crosses his arms over his chest as he continues to think things over. He'd been to the sixties a few times on missions before he got stranded there with his family. So he knows first hand that the behavior going on around them really doesn't reflect the normal behavior of the sixties. This is more the idealistic view of things that they like to allude to in 60s sitcoms. So yeah they are definitely going to need to watch their backs. Thus he nods in agreement.

She makes a valid point about the voice but the paranoid side of his brain wonders if that is what they want them to do. To seek out the voice in order to fall into whatever nefarious plot they have going on. ]

Maybe, but it could also be a trap. Whatever we do, we'll have to proceed with caution, since we are at a clear disadvantage.

[monomachy]

[Diana has fallen into a trap or two during her life, but this doesn't feel like one to her. No, the voice that had called out to her had been truly fearful, the cry for help genuine. She could feel it in her heart. Even if it is a trick, that isn't something she can just ignore.

She curls her fingers into the countertop, staring down at their cups. A disadvantage, yes. She's learned by now that her reflexes and her strength aren't where they should be. Her abilities have been... locked away somehow. To say the least, it's frustrating to not know how or why it's happened.]

We are. But that doesn't mean we're helpless in all this.

[oldmanfive]

[ He glances over to the coffee maker, watching the brew boiling, while the smell of coffee feels the air. Honestly that familiar smell is the most comforting thing to him thus far, since he woke up in this strange place.

He looks back toward Diana with a bit of a frown, he can hear the frustration in her voice. Of course the situation they are in is quite frustrating, but he gets the sense that there is more to it than that. Thus he takes a guess. ]

I take it that you had powers before waking in this place as well?

[ Definitely implying that has lost his powers too. ]

[monomachy]

[She wishes she could find comfort in that, or in anything right now. At this moment, all she's truly able to do is endure, which is less dramatic than it sounds. Diana has never been in this kind of situation before; she's never been deprived of her abilities, of who she is. It's disturbing, distressing, and something she's actively trying to avoid thinking about.

She glances up sharply, more in an assessing way than hostile. But he's admitted something to her, so she can at least do the same.]

Yes. [She blows out a slow breath.] They're... locked away. [She doesn't know if that makes sense, but it's how she feels.]

[oldmanfive]

[ He slightly frowns, there's a part of him that was hoping maybe he had been wrong. But her confirmation means that whoever is responsible for bring them here, knows how they tick well enough to suppress their powers. Certainly this isn't like anything he's felt before in the past. Exhaustion, starvation and literally being tortured with electrical currents were just some of the ways that his powers had been rendered useless in the past.

None of which were present now. He couldn't even suggest being drugged, since he was unaware of any type of drug that would leave him this coherent, but be strong enough to suppress his powers. ]

Whoever or whatever brought us here, must know a lot about us to be able to do all of this.

[ And he really doesn't like the idea there is anyone or anything that knowledgeable and powerful to pull something like this off.]

[monomachy]

[Her jaw tightens at that. Diana makes it her business to make sure nobody knows that much about her. Not even her new teammates know the entirety of her abilities. Something inside Diana cracked the day Steve Trevor died, and the only way she'd seen to keep it from shattering completely was to curl in on herself, hiding it away. It's been a long time since she's trusted anyone to get that close to her, so she can't imagine how whoever (or whatever) brought them here was able to discover the true extent of her abilities.

Just thinking about it puts a sour taste in her mouth. She nods.]

It can't have been pure luck.

[Not with so many people who may or may not have superhuman abilities.]

Then the question becomes, how did they learn so much?

[oldmanfive]

[His own frown deepens, because the more he thinks about the situation, the more questions arise. He knows there are ways he could have learned about him, his sister's autobiography, his father research journals and the Temps Commission files. But this definitely feels bigger than any of them. ]

Definitely not. [ He certainly agrees that it can't be luck that they were able to suppress not just him, but her too.]

I can think of a few ways they learned things about me, but none of them can explain exactly how they figured out how to entirely block my abilities here. Back home there were people who figured out how to exhaust and even disrupt my abilities, but this feels way different from that.

[ He admits, because at this point, he is not going to figure this out on his own, which means that he is going to have to learn to trust others, even if it is just a little bit. ]

[monomachy]

[For Diana, this is entirely uncharted territory. Her powers have become such a core part of who she is over the past century that being without them--well, she's still trying to figure out where she stands.]

I've... never lost my abilities.

[Admitting it aloud turns her stomach, and she rests her forearms on the counter, leaning against it. She wracks through her memories, trying to remember anything even remotely similar happening, but the closest thing she can think of is impossible to repeat. Diana exhales slowly, nails pressing into her palms as she curls her fingers into them.]

There isn't anyone alive who would know how to take them from me.

[All her divine kin are dead, and only a god can kill another god--or depower them, as is the case.]

In my world, anyway.

[Because it's abundantly clear to her that whatever this is, it isn't her Earth.]

[oldmanfive]

[ He has to admit that watching her react to her lost of abilities is unsettling even to him. She looks genuinely at a lost and he is out of his depth to offer any sort of comfort. Momentarily he remains silent as he considers his next words.

In the time they have been chatting, the coffee seems to have finished brewing. It's piping hot and the aroma fills the kitchen. He merely sighs as he picks up the pot and fills the two cups on the counter, before putting the pot back on the burner.]

I guess that does beg the question of what world are we in? Everything is overexaggerated and just a little too 'perfect' to be real. This whole family dynamic they want us to play in, while actively keeping us from using our abilities is just weird. I just can't see a point to it yet. We need more information than what we got and I don't know how we are going to get it.

[ He sighs again, clearly frustrated as he picks up his cup of coffee and blows on it. He has always preferred just black coffee, so he is fine with not adding sugar or cream at this point. He takes a small sip, hoping that the familiar taste will help spark some of his brain cells. ]

[monomachy]

[The smell of coffee is familiar, and serves to ground her from what could have been a troublesome mental spiral. She wraps both of her hands around the mug and pulls it towards herself, taking a deep inhale. She already feels a bit better for it, and that helps her think on his words. After a moment of consideration, she nods.]

It's like we're in one of those old magazines where they show a picture of a family, and everyone is just a little too excited to be there.

[It's the closest comparison she can think of, and it makes an uncomfortable feeling bubble up in the back of her mind. She pushes it down, focusing on the present. The coffee seems to have helped rejuvenate her, and she briskly adds:]

All of us are going to have to work together to figure it out. The more minds that are on this, the better. Someone is bound to hit the mark.

[oldmanfive]

[ He can agree with her comparison at this point, especially as it brings him mind to the pictures in the living room, portraying their images as some sort of happy nuclear family. He slightly frowns because how the hell did they manage the pictures? He takes another sip of his coffee. ]

Speaking of pictures, how disturbing are the pictures in this house? They don't really look like they were photoshopped. But I'm also positive that neither of us remember taking part in them either.

[ It just raises more questions over how much control do their captors have over them? They had already messed with their abilities, so them tampering with their minds isn't out of the question.]

True, it doesn't seem like we have much choice at this point. Especially since we aren't going to figure things out on our own.

[monomachy]

[Her grip tightens on the mug just slightly; at her full strength, it might've shattered.]

I don't know. There are some beings that can make others see what they want them to see, but this doesn't seem to be that.

[She moves towards one of the photos, running her finger down the wooden frame. It's certainly real.]

If it is some kind of magic, it's one I haven't encountered before.

[The strangeness of this place has caused her to have something of a lapse in judgement; where she might have hidden things like that before, there doesn't seem to be a point, now. She's powerless, and needs to get home. Any knowledge she has could steer someone else in the right direction.]

[oldmanfive]

[ Magic, now there's a term he has no real experience with, so he can't offer much up on that front. He takes another drink of his coffee as he considers things, while she examines one of the photos.]

Unfortunately where I came from magic wasn't something I had to deal with. [ Of course, he is smart enough not to discredit it just because he has no experience with it and well science can't exactly explain their current predicament.]

At this point, we should probably try to explore the boundaries of this place and see if we can find anything else out about it.

[ He takes another sip of his coffee. They don't really have any other options available to them other than to play along and keep pushing at the boundaries. ]

[monomachy]

I wouldn't exactly call it unfortunate. Magic is fickle.

[At least, most of what she's seen has been. She blows out a slow breath, swirling her coffee around in her mug. He's may be right, but she has a bad feeling about this place. Everyone is... too happy. Too perfect. It has to be a front for something, she just doesn't know what that is yet. She's hesitant to put others in the way of whatever it might be.

But they're all in the same boat: powerless, and wanting to go home. So she nods.]

I'm sure there are others who would join us.

[oldmanfive]

You know the same could be said when dealing with superpowered individuals in general.

[ He retorts in an attempt to lighten the mood a little. Though dealing with superpowers could definitely be fickle, he had his fair share of hardships because of them and his siblings hadnt fared any better in that department.

He takes yet another sip of his coffee, while he continues to ponder their situation. However he does have to admit that speaking with Diana as they try to work through what they can surmise so far is much easier than working through problems with his siblings. Dealing with his siblings is like herding cats. ]

Mostly likely, though let's hope any others we come across that are displaced like us, will be actually helpful. If anyone from my actual family is here...or anyone like them then we're likely screwed.

[ It's hard not to be disparaging of his real family since they keep getting themselves killed, forcing him to save them again and again. ]