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TDM - OCTOBER 2020

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.

▶ NAVIGATION ◀
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OOC INFO	premise \| rules \| faq \| taken \| applications \| hiatus/drop/canon updates \| reserves \| mod contact
SETTING INFO	calendar \| setting \| housing \| npcs \| death and tranquilizing \| event suggestions/engagements

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A: October 1st
[This is not what she expected. At all.

People coming back from the dead is not medically unheard of in her time, but that requires certain things. Medical care, the appropriate situation, actually being an organic being and not a collection of thoughts and light. So for Cortana to suddenly wake up in bed, silken pajamas clinging to her skin--her skin! that's new!--well. Maybe she can be excused for coming awake with a strangled gasp and a knot of tangled sheets. A racing heart and adrenaline rushing through her veins is new--so new--and all the feelings that come with it are a mess of unknowns and first experiences and she can't quite adjust to mobile limbs in the first few seconds of awareness so.

Yeah, she just fell right out of bed with one hell of a thud. Roomy, she'll apologize for that thud if it woke you, once she's done staring at her hands. They're not blue anymore. She's not blue anymore.

She's alive.

Or, if you've managed to sleep through that you may be instead awoken by a piece of clothing hitting you in the face. She'll apologize for that too. Later. Because at that instant her side of the room pretty much looks like it just went through a windstorm, clothing tossed haphazardly onto her unmade bed, bits and baubles set aside in a wild search for understanding. It doesn't come easily, or quickly. At the first signs of life from the other person in the room she turns, electric blue eyes wide.]

Is this--are you--[Words, Cortana! She pauses, swallows, tries again:] This is real, isn't it?

[A bit later, once she's had time to calm down and adjust to this new frame, it's possible to find her sitting on the front lawn, her knees drawn up to her chest and bare feet digging into the perfectly manicured grass. The skies are clear and blue and bright, but her eyes are closed. She seems to just be...soaking up the sun? Strange woman, this one.]

B: Mid-October
[This has all been one hell of an adjustment, but when two weeks of attempting to question the locals amounts to little more than tittering laughter and a whole lot of nothing useful, Cortana switches tactics. Blend in, earn their trust, and maybe--just maybe--someone who knows something will let something slip.

Or maybe they don't. But more often than not Cortana can still be found walking the neighborhood, and if she spots anyone--local or otherwise--putting up decorations she heads over.]

Need a hand with that?

[Or, if you instead walk by the house she's at, she can also be found on her front porch, up to her elbows in pumpkin guts as she carves a lantern for the festivities. The pattern is perhaps a bit much for such an...interesting canvas, but she's trying! Or, you know, would be, if the article in the newspaper she'd laid down hadn't caught her eye. She's frowning as she reads it.]

Twenty bodies can't just disappear like that. What happened...

C: Always respect the dead. CW: Violence, potential for injury.
[The festivities are well underway, but after nearly a month of this place and its...eclectic variations on food, Cortana doesn't much want to test her luck with candies. Instead she's inside the house, writing away on a notepad as she sits on the couch, when the static breaks the calm. She's left staring at the screen as it returns to normal, blinking. That sounded like a bad comms relay, but how could it--this technology's too old for that so how--

Yet more unanswered questions.]

Well, that was weird.

[And then, without warning, there's a crash from next door. Pausing only long enough to look at whoever's nearest to her, she hits the front door at a run only to come to a screeching halt on the porch, nearly hitting the sputtering jack-o-lantern she left by the steps. The candle has nearly burned down to nothing, but her attention is on the gaggle of children standing at the end of the driveway, watching. Waiting.

Another crash from down the street pulls her attention up. More kids breaking through front windows, pounding down front doors, and people in need of help. The children outnumber them a few dozen to one, it seems. Children, just like the ones waiting at the end of the drive. One of them tilts their head at her, watching her right back. If anyone comes up beside or behind her, she bars their way with an arm thrown out and a low, dark whisper.]

Go back inside and find a weapon. We're about to get attacked.

[You know what's easier than dealing with your own existential questions about where you are and how you got here? Helping someone else who seems even more confused than you are.]

Are you all right?

[Erwin kneels beside the woman, awkwardly offering her his arm to help her up.]

You didn't hurt yourself, did you?

I. I'm not.

[Hurt? Sure? Both? It's hard to say. Her heart races away beneath her sternum, blood rushing through her ears. It's all new, all so much to process with no point of reference and she's lost, half anchored by the solid floor beneath her and half lost in her own head. She barely notices Erwin is there at first, only aware that he's not John. She was just with him and saying goodbye and then.

And then here. Where he doesn't seem to be, where nothing is as it was and. One step at a time. With a deep breath, she closes her eyes even as she reaches for this stranger's arm.]

I'm okay. Thanks.

[Just, you know, tangled in the sheets! Gah, fabric. She kicks it free with a frown.]

I'm guessing you're as new to this place as I am, huh?

[As he helps her to her feet, the woman confirms something Erwin had been afraid of, and an enormous wave of relief washes over him. It's temporary, she doesn't know anything about this place either, but at least he's not alone in his confusion.]

Yes.

[He tries to smile at her, but it comes out looking more like a grimace.]

This isn't where I was before. It's not for you, either?

Oh, not even remotely.

[In fact it seems about as far from there as one could get, in more ways than one. She rakes both hands through her hair, an odd expression flashing across her face for a moment, before her hands settle on her hips.]

Which begs the question of how either of us got here. Teleportation usually announces itself better than this. [And doesn't turn incorporeal hard light into what feels like an organic body. She frowns, puzzled.] I don't suppose you saw any lights where you last were? Touch any strange terminals?

No. Nothing like that.

[Erwin has no idea what she's talking about. He doesn't think even Hange would be able to understand what this woman just said.]

I was riding my horse into battle. We were... we were going to get overrun.

[Cortana has no clue what he's talking about. The words register and make sense as a language but. What the heck is he talking about?]

Horse? As in armed cavalry units? People haven't rode horses into battle for--

[Centuries. Her jaw shuts with an audible click, the first hint of a theory settling in. He saw nothing like the teleportation she's used to, and to be honest neither did she. Being that this man wasn't there where she was it stands to reason that they're not from the same place, but. Oh, if her thought is accurate, then.]

This might be a strange question, but what year was it where you were?

Cavalry? No, the Survey Corps.

[Erwin's brows draw down; he's thinking just as furiously as she is, trying to tie all the pieces together.]

850.

[Which he's going to assume is a long, long time and place from wherever she's from. He maintains eye contact, but gestures around the room, at their surroundings.]

Things aren't like this where I'm from.

[850. 2557. Two very different times and equally different places. Death itself turned back. There aren't enough pieces to figure out this puzzle, but what few she has aren't painting a very rosy picture.]

Or where I'm from. Things haven't looked anything like this for a...very long time.

[If at all. Her history's a bit rusty these days. With a gusty sigh she drops back down onto the bed she fell out of, blowing a sigh into her hands. Oh, those clever bastards. When she gets her hands on whomever--whatever--caused this, there's going to be a Talk.]

Which means we were just teleported through both time and space. That's. [Another sigh, and a grimace. Is this what a headache is supposed to feel like?] That's not supposed to be possible. Not without a slipspace drive...

I don't know what any of that is.

[Erwin sits on the bed next to her, making sure to give her enough space that she's not intimidated. What she's saying doesn't make any sense, but he's intrigued all the same.]

What you're suggesting is that we were both pulled here, through both time and space. Is such a thing possible in your world?

In theory, sure, but not with the technology that was available at the time. Going through space is one thing, but time only goes one way. You're not supposed to be able to manipulate it like this!

[There's a thousand different ways this could play out, and it's honestly a little exciting. Having a puzzle to solve keeps her from thinking about how lost she feels, and she turns to Erwin only to stop cold. He doesn't know what any of this is.

Right. 850. Cavalry based warfare, not spaceships and slipspace drives. Despite his evident humanity, this may as well be first contact with a pre-spaceflight race and. Wow. That's new. She exhales, runs a hand through her hair, and gives him a sheepish smile.]

Sorry. The people in my reality already mastered spaceflight, so this is all pretty basic to me. I got ahead of myself. [A little. Turning, she extends a hand towards him. People...do use handshakes in his reality, right?] Cortana. It's nice to meet you, under the circumstances.

[Amazing. At some point in the future, humanity will master flying through space. It may not be on his world, and he certainly won't live to see it, but that gives Erwin an odd, hopeful feeling, deep in his chest. Humanity survives. It survives, and it goes on to travel between the stars.]

It's fine. [He accepts her hand, a little awkwardly, with his left one, and shakes it.] Erwin Smith. A pleasure to meet you as well, Cortana.

[He smiles at her.]

You're going to have to forgive me, because I'm going to have so many questions for you.

[Huh. Left hand. Left handed, something off with his right hand, or just unsure how to respond? A question for another time, and not the one she really wants to open with. Maybe later, because she has plenty of questions of her own, and every second they spend up here is one more second she doesn't have to face what's out there.

Doesn't have to face the idea that he didn't come with her.

So instead she rocks her legs up to sit cross-legged and facing Erwin, completely at ease with the idea of what will probably amount to a friendly interrogation.]

If you want forgiveness, you'll need to do something that warrants needing it first. [Yes, she's teasing. And grinning.] Ask away.

[Erwin has some questions about the people important to him back home too, and why they're not here, so distracting themselves by talking about space travel sounds like a great idea. He turns so he's facing her, and smiles back, recognizing that she's teasing him. He likes her already.]

Tell me about space travel. How far out have humans gone? What kinds of worlds are out there? Is there any other intelligent life?

Starting with the big questions, huh?

[Yeah, she likes him a bit, too. It's been too long since she's seen anyone with that sort of unbridled curiosity, the desire to learn for the sake of learning, not for surviving some other horrible thing being thrown at them. It's nice to see that humanity's drive exists even in other realities.]

Well, let me think. In my reality humanity had encountered nine other forms of sapient life, so yes there's lots of intelligent life out there besides us. Every one of those life forms lived on a world that was entirely different from ours, so any kind of world you can imagine is probably out there, and as for how far...[A brief pause as she considers how to say this, then adds:] Well, we'd barely left our galactic city, as it were. We still had the whole of the continent left to explore, and they were definitely getting there.

[Humanity hadn't spread past the Orion Spur, after all; who knew what else could still be out there! Hopefully, in either his reality or hers, they get to see the rest of it someday. She won't, but the look in her eyes grows fond all the same.]

That's the thing with humanity. Give them time and a target, and they'll get it done. Even if it's thousands of light years away.

TEST DRIVE MEME - OCTOBER 2020

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

OCTOBER 1st.

GETTING TO KNOW THE NEIGHBORS.

A. AUNT MYRNA'S PARTY CHEESE SALAD.

B. DON'T BE A SQUARE!

THROUGHOUT OCTOBER.

HALLOWEEN.

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

A. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR CANDY.

B. ALWAYS RESPECT THE DEAD.

OOC INFO

Cortana | Halo 4 | OTA

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