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

wanda maximoff ✖ mcu ✖ ota

[hext]

【 OCTOBER 1ST: MEET THE FAM 】

[ That voice… it had sounded so foreign and so familiar all at once. Wanda recalled being that small, that lost, that trapped — so close to death after losing her parents — and she had reached out blindly, desperately, toward the sound of that despairing child. Or she thought she had…

…but her limbs felt distant from her body and pulled her somewhere else, into a distinct, poignant darkness, and she fell. She kept falling — deeper, deeper, sightless and heavy and sinking, and she wondered distantly if this was how all things ended, silent and blind and dull.

Until she opened… opens… her eyes.

Wanda finds herself in a warm bed beneath warm daylight and there are warm cries of joy and life outside a cookie cutter window above her head. She can move, and so she does, startled —

— and falls directly out of that bed onto the floor. ]

…oophfh!

[ It’s certainly noise that would have been heard downstairs, and more to that point, she hears rustling below her, on what must be the first floor of a two story house. Wanda pulls herself to her feet, slits her gaze through the curtain to the street outside, and gauges her surroundings. Children playing; parental figures watching. Neatly manicured lawns, all matching. Housing units divvied out on the street like they were distributed from a hole punch tool. Everything is very bright. Shin length skirts.

She snaps her head back down to her own attire. Is this a baby pink nightgown and matching terrycloth slippers? Ohhhh, no we don’t.

Wanda marks her exits and chooses the door for expediency, taking in the surrounding noises growing louder from the first floor. It’s strange to her that she can’t hear any mental clutter, no intentions, no side-talk, as she advances down the staircase. If the people here are her captors and they have mental defenses, no matter — she has other means to incapacitate them and escape.

Just as she rounds the lower corner of the stairwell, she hears footsteps approaching, and talk she can’t quite make out. Something about a plan, possibly?

It’s just a simple immobilization hex, really, nothing harmful (they could be, albeit unlikely, innocent) — and she steps out, throws her arms elegantly forward, expression poised and confident because her opponents are about to FREEZE IN PLACE!

…They do nothing of the sort and she is so stunned by the blunt absent force of her magic absolutely abandoning her in the moment that Wanda trips and tumbles down the last two stairs. ]

Don’t move,

[ she groans. ]

State your business.

[ Yes. Elegant. ]

【 BEING NEIGHBORLY: BLOCK PARTY STYLE 】

[ “Hi, my name is _____.”

She stares at the name badge in quietly simmering fury with her newfangled black Sharpie (‘Aren’t they just SWELL, Wanda? What won’t they come up with next!’), sorely tempted to out herself as the Scarlet Witch for all and sundry. But simply because her neighbors, especially the Smiley Ones, don’t seem to believe what she or anyone else seems to remember about their origins, doesn’t mean she should automatically trust everyone who thinks they are trapped here.

Wanda scratches out one badge with excessive vigor. Rips up the badge, letting the pieces flutter, forlorn and impotent, to the ground. Begins again.

Once she turns around, her badge reads, “Hi, my name is wandamaximoffandiamnotawife!”

She smiles brilliantly at you, waiting for your turn, just as one of the neighbors approaches her with—

—oh. Mmm. Another delightful mold of gelatin.
Wanda takes the plate, her smile never faltering, and lets the gelatin slide directly to the grass below. ]

Oops! Silly me! [ her gasp is pleasant, billowy. ] I would probably lose my head if it weren’t attached to my shoulders! [ Her laugh rings out like a bell, and as if signaled, the neighbor chimes in, politely amused — not at all dismayed by the gelatin in a bulbous heap at their feet.

Wanda’s eyes fix on you, reading gently through her trill. Mildly probing. Still polite. Easily dismissed if you are not who she is hoping for. ]

Follow me, however, if you are sick of Jell-o.

[ She trails off to a grove of trees in her swishing pinafores and carefully pinned curls, waiting cautiously to see if you follow her coded message. ]

【 HALLOWEEN: RAZOR SHARP RESPECT FOR THE DEAD (cw: body horror/razors/dead children) 】

[ An entire bus of children in costume is missing, with one well-known principal already found dead, and still the town is thronging with youth and adults alike dressed up and hunting for candy tonight as if nothing is wrong. As if life is as sweet and sultry and comforting as the apples and cinnamon she can smell wafting from nearly every open window as she roams down the streets, surveying, investigating, curious.

Wanda has always had a certain slanted regard for Halloween. She enjoys the mysticism, the freedom of spirit (so to speak) that it gives people — especially children — who are usually shuttered and unseen, unheard. One could argue that, being a witch (more or less), she ought to love this holiday.

But she considers all the abuses, the excuses, the looks of fear from those who never understood, and how blisteringly naked she feels without her powers right now, and she decides that tonight, at least, she hates it.

The people of this town already wear horrible masks; an extra layer only confuses things further. Wanda feels a chill crawl up her bare forearms and for a desperate moment she looks down, half-hoping to find crimson tendrils curling and smoking up along her skin in tandem with the warning in her gut as they’re wont to do, but nothing—

—nothing, and then a happy child presses a candy bar into her outstretched hand as he runs by laughing, just as her stomach rumbles. ]

Treat for ya, lady! Happy Halloween!

[ And then he’s gone, and she’s hungry, and she takes a bite and suddenly there’s razor hot pain shooting through the roof of her gums and blood is pouring from her mouth and she’s screaming, screaming at no one in particular…

…and other people are screaming, up ahead, their screams are so shrill and surprised Wanda thinks she can hear them in her mind and for a moment she’s confused, terrified…

…confused and terrified because small children are attacking townspeople right in front of her, biting and scratching and kicking and their strength is wrong and too great and their skin is melting off their bones— ]

Stop—!

[ She’s still screaming, but her terror is combusting with rage now, and she doesn’t know who is whom immediately in the dark but she won’t see dead things try to make more dead things, she won’t let that happen. Wanda pulls a moldy tin man off a teenager with as much brute force as she can manage; it snarls and moans and hisses Trick or treeeeat! as she launches the child into the air and onto the ground.

It gets back up.
They all get back up.

Wanda spits blood down at her feet, making sure there are no more sharp blades left in her mouth, then scans the street, flits her eyes around the small group huddling and shifting around the area, scraping themselves free of corpse children. ]

Stay back. We need to find shelter. One of these houses.

[ She keeps her feet spread apart and mobile, arms out (habit). Glances back one more time. ]

What set them off?

【 WILDCARD 】

( throw anything at me, i’m so flexible!! Shoot me a PM or just tag a thing!! ♥ )

sister sister, never knew how much i missed ya | halloween | cw: everything you mentioned + vomiting

[chromiums]

[ the razors and needles would have been something she could detect if her powers weren't muted, if everything about this place weren't wrong. the poison should have smelled off, maybe, but there are too many distractions for lorna to sense it and the candy bar she'd eaten forces its way out almost the second it settles in her stomach, acid and chocolate burning its way up her throat. it was a stupid idea, upon reflection, but it's one of the only non-gelatin based food products she's seen since she woke up in this godforsaken town and she'd been eager for something resembling that didn't wobble unnaturally or smell like congealing meat.

the thought makes her nauseous all over again, but she grits her teeth as she straightens, wiping her mouth harshly with the back of her hand to find the dead children that had been mentioned in the paper viciously attacking the citizens. her strength in a fight comes mostly from her abilities, but she's been getting into fights since long before those had manifested, and she's able of pulling a few of them off of people before another young woman gets her attention.

lorna's been in the leader and follower position (the latter more often than not lately), and she sounds as if this sort of situation is something she's handled before. it's enough for her to trust her judgment, at least for now. ]

I don't know. But you're right, we need to get them inside. [ they can figure out details on how they were brought back once they're (relatively) safe, but they need to survive this first. ]

october 1st

[collapsar]

[ first things first, clara needs to get out of this house.

it's the picture frames that instantly make her nauseous, almost stumbling over as she shuffles through the wardrobe to try and find her own regular clothes. she only seems to feel sicker as the contents remain very distinctly belonging to an classic suburban time period like a live old show straight out of the telly.

being in a different time isn't any too bizarre for her, not when she's spent the past few years of her life traveling through all of time and space, forwards and back; it's the eeriness that she feels that's most unsettling than where she is, sensing something uncomfortable whenever she sees her face in one of those photos showcasing her face.

as much as she's skeptical, she slips on one of the old fashioned dresses, appearing like a modeled housewife, the style proving better than wandering out in her knickers, before she hurries downstairs, giving a quick surveillance of its emptiness before slipping out the door.

rushing over to the next house across the yard, she gives a knock before she opens it herself. ]

Hello? [ her voice echoes before she steps carefully, wandering from room to room before she slips closer to the stairwell, jolting with a minor squeak as the woman appears.

raising her hands, clara watches as the woman herself seems just as offset by all of this, stumbling down the steps. ]

Are you alr— oh! [ whatever that tumble was, it doesn't shake the woman's intent of questioning. which, honestly, can't really be blamed, can it? ] Right, of course, um — no need to phone up the police, I promise. This isn't a robbery. Not exactly what one wears to go robbing now, is it?

meet the fam

[ctn_0452_9]

[Given that Cortana herself fell out of bed as well, she pays little mind to the kerfuffle from upstairs. Whoever just woke up in this unfamiliar and unknown house will wander downstairs eventually, and if she doesn't continue with her inventory of the kitchen she's going to have to start thinking.

But, of course, this pen's run out of ink--why couldn't this have been in the 26th century, dammit. Tablets never ran out of the ability to write!--and she has to go back to the living room to get another one, which puts her at the foot of the steps just as Wanda turns the corner and--

Well. She hasn't seen someone that not graceful since she dumped the Chief upside down. Don't move? Not likely. With a badly stifled laugh she crosses the short distance between them and offers an empty, if slightly ink stained hand.]

Right now? Offering to help you up off the floor. [Don't mind her smile, Wanda. It's kind enough to be real.] Did you bruise anything besides your pride?

DARLING BABE, oct. 1st

[gsoh]

[ peter's sleeping habits err on the side of not great. that is to say: he loves sleep, but sleep so often does not love him and neither do circumstances, so he'd woken fairly early — early enough for the sun to be a vague suggestion, peeking out between clouds in pinky-orangey hues. he'd woken, too, without so much as the merest hint of a headache, nothing that had even resembled his spider-sense warning him that things were not as they seemed (or something), which had been odd because—

—mostly because this isn't home, and also because this isn't new york, and also because these aren't pyjamas he's ever owned in his life.

sure, the blue and white stripes of the matching shirt (shirt!! for sleeping in) and trousers resemble something he might have worn as a gangly, still-growing-into-his-skin, all-elbows-and-knees teenager, but they're not anything he can recall seeing, wearing, owning or being aware of the existence of this side of the 20^th century.

(he could get used to the robe, though.)

he'd spent some time walking from room to room, carefully — carefully — avoiding re-entering the bedroom where his sleeping — wife? — an unknown sleeping woman lay in the bed he'd woken up in, taking time to study photo after photo after photo.

in some ways, the house reminded him of aunt may's and uncle ben's when he'd been a kid and in some ways, that more than anything else, makes him think that this is thanks to mysterio, or hypno-hustler or even—

nah, mostly one of those two.

(was hypno-hustler still around? had he given up yet?)

the consideration is interrupted by a loud thud, a thud that peter thinks sounds like someone falling out of bed and he freezes, a little ungainly. (a side thought: is his eyesight worse than normal?). the thud is soon followed by the sound, peter's sure, of someone descending the stairs — footsteps slightly muffled — and he shuffles out into the hallway to stand at the bottom of the stairs, a half-eaten cookie from the kitchen in one hand.

(it's her! the woman! from the photos.

—and "his" bed. ignoring that—)

he breathes in sharply as her expression shifts, sharp confidence that's punctuated by—

oh.

peter snorts.

he can't help it, it's an unattractive sound at the best of times but she'd looked so sure of herself and then—

he tries to cover it up with a cough, pressing a hand against his lips and taking a moment to respond, her words only semi-registering and he replies, equally elegantly with— ]

I live here. [ when in doubt: lie, and commit to it.

he gestures vaguely, with his cookie-hand, at the veritable assortment of photos adorning the walls. ("you see?") pause; bite of cookie. ] —Morning.

[ is she as confused as he is? is the question he wants to ask, but he's not sure if it's the one he should ask. ]

oct 1

[hoshikiri]

[Takame had somehow made his way downstairs, but the woman who followed suit suddenly coming downstairs and gesturing like she was ready to attack(?) made him go on the offensive, taking his own fighting stance.

... Then she fell.]

Ah.

[He'd feel more pity towards her if she didn't try to approach him so aggressively. Perhaps it would come later, especially considering he had bruise from falling down himself earlier. For now he would do as demanded and stay still, but he wouldn't drop his stance.]

... Investigation. I awoke in this house, but I do not recognize it. [A pause. He was wavering back and forth and trying to lean against the closest wall or door.] ... State yours. Have you some reason to try and attack me?

Meet the Fam

[the_caped_crusader]

[ bruce turns towards the dumbass shouting orders at him who just fell down the stairs and then immediately turns back around to ignore her. ]

Well, at least you're not one of them.