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

Bruce Wayne | DC Rebirth | OTA

[the_caped_crusader]

OCTOBER 1st.

[ the dream is a twisted version of one he had as a child. in it, bruce is at the bottom of a cave, looking up towards the light like a pinprick in the darkness. the distance between him and safety seems like an impossible difference, but he still reaches up desperately and meekly calls out.

"please, help me..."

the pain comes to him when he realizes the voice isn't his, and he doubles in on himself as the world around him starts to throb like a localized pain he can't identify when the dream goes black and he wakes to a flash of sunlight and soaked bedsheets. from the delirium of sleep, he doesn't immediately recognize that things are different; for all he knows, the body next to his would be selina's. as his eyes scan the room, though, there's one thing that catches his eye that makes bruce pull himself from the sticky sheets and slowly approach.

it's a picture of him, ten years old, ready to go to school. he looks happy, smiling and waving at parents who should be dead. the picture looks like bruce wayne, but it's not him. when he plucks the picture from the wall and scrutinizes it before the reverie of children laughing from outside it makes him set it down and really take in the new eerily peaceful home. bruce peels the murky pajama shirt from his back and tosses it aside when he hears the sing-song sound from downstairs, "thirty days til halloween..."

GETTING TO KNOW THE NEIGHBORS- A. AUNT MYRNA'S PARTY CHEESE SALAD.

[ as the new neighbors stop by like clockwork, bruce will smile and offer friendly simplicities, 'how's the weather-esque' small talk before he summarily thanks them and closes the door on their face. he's acted his whole life, after all, as a billionaire playboy philanthropist, so fooling a bunch of breathing stepford mannequins wasn't too much of a challenge. not too far off from the gotham elite he so frequently had to mingle with, actually. once in the safety of his home-- safety being a relative term here, his dour expression will return and he'll look down at the plate of off-putting food before regarding you before bringing it to the kitchen table for all of you to inspect.

with the body bag tupperware open, you'll all inspect the cadaver that was once food together in a moment of bleak family bonding, staring down either sobersided and austere like your new father, or with abject horror. after a very long moment of inspection and without a word, bruce reseals the tupperware and tosses it straight into the goddamn trash with a loud *THUMP*, to which he turns and clearly tells all of you... ]

I think we'll cook for ourselves.

HALLOWEEN- B. ALWAYS RESPECT THE DEAD

[ halloween has always been a bad month for bruce. gotham itself was often compared to a living haunted house by many who lived outside of it, so for the entire month of october, it's safe to say that he'd been ready for the other shoe to drop. when night falls on halloween, he pulls back the curtains and peers up at the moonlight, almost distantly expecting the bat signal to shine out into the night sky. instead, he's greeted by the ring of his doorbell, and a throaty "trick or treat" from the bloated, gray-skinned children outside. he meets their eyes, and disquietingly, they seem more alive and wanting than his neighbors with their emotionless smiles and empty, white-saucered stares. they remind him of the dark robins with their incessant crowing from back home, bringing back bad memories.

knock

knock

knock

it comes again, but the glowing smile of the jack o'lantern keeps them at bay until they wander off unsatisfied. earlier in the month, you might have been worried about bruce falling into the routine of normalcy trapped here in santa ana, carving the pumpkin at the kitchen table with a steady resolve and hand, but when you asked him, all he ever replied was that he "thought it might be a good idea." in his heart, bruce was a detective. one of the best, his world said, and so when he'd woken up one day to see that not one but all of their neighbors had placed jack o'lanterns outside, he decided to follow suit. call it intuition, but he had an eerie suspicion that it might be a smart idea to do as the romans do this time around.

for the wayne house, they were protected by the glowing symbol of a bat.

but he also expected and noticed that some of the others in the neighborhood might not feel the same way, and so when he hears your struggling and clattering from across the street he'll go running to help. he'll also likely tell his "family" to stay and guard their home-- whether or not you listen is another thing entirely. when he gets to you, the less cautious of the bunch, you'll find him readily assisting. bruce wayne was never gifted with superpowers or super strength, but through vigorous training and a lifetime of dedication he could still bench a thousand pounds and punch through brick walls, so coming to your defense is not entirely without merit. he yells something to you among the clamor about "lighting a jack o'lantern," which might seem ridiculous to you, given the situation, but as he firmly puts his loafer to an undead child's head with a sickening squelch, you may want to reconsider his advice.

hours later, when the commotion is done, the wayne family returns home with their hair tousled, their clothes disheveled and covered in splashes of undead muck and broken glass, skin decorated in colorful cuts and bruises when you all decide to sit down on the couch as a family and rest, staring dead-eyed at the wall. the silence lasts for a moment when the tv turns itself on again to welcome you home with another blaring "HALLOWEEN HALLOWEEN HALLOWEEN!" bruce gets up and puts his foot through the goddamn tv screen as the haunted staccato of the speakers cries out as it dies and is silenced...

HALLO... EEN...

HA... O... EN...

HA...L...EE--

WILDCARD.

[ hello! if you'd like to do something else, or plan something specific, please feel free to pm me or message me on plurk at BATGUY! ]

Tupperware nightmare

[miaoudel]

[Watching Bruce very bluntly close the door shut in someone's face makes Adrien since, despite himself, and he feels a little part of him pang unpleasantly. The sober austerity just reminds him of his actual father.

He doesn't flinch when the Tupperware gets trashed, though. It deserves it.]

I've never had to cook before, but I still think I can make something better than that. [It's a weak joke, that matches his weak smile.]

[the_caped_crusader]

I don't think there was any cooking involved in whatever the hell that was, but I think we'll have to team up on this one, kid.

[ bruce crosses his arms and stares down into the darkness of the trashcan. the last time he tried to cook something by himself, he almost burned down his kitchen. in this case, that might be a net positive. ]

[miaoudel]

[What could go wrong with two pampered rich kids playing Chef?]

Maybe this place has some recipe books? [He's going to take his elbows off the kitchen counter and crouch down to investigate the cupboards attached to it.] Or we can go and buy some later.

[the_caped_crusader]

Five bucks says they're all about Jell-O.

[ oh sweet summer child, he doesn't think this is going to go like you expect it to. opting for a different plan, bruce searches the cupboards for edible staples like tuna and crackers. ]

I'm Bruce, by the way.

[miaoudel]

If nothing else, we can just live on regular flavoured Jell-O for a while. [Looking gives him something to do besides think about his father, so he'll take it.]

Adrien. Adrien Agreste. [With the familiar High Society Inflection that this is a name Bruce ought to know.]

poor aunt myrna

[monomachy]

[Diana had been relieved, at first, when the neighbors had started bringing food over. Strange as they are, at least they aren't doing anything... un-neighborly. Then she sees the actual food they bring--or at least what they call food. She doesn't try to hide her revulsion, and is glad to see it go into the trash.

However--]

I hope you know some recipes.

[the_caped_crusader]

[ staring down at the trash can with disdain. ]

What makes you think I've cooked a single day in my life, Diana?

[monomachy]

[She stares at him for a moment, realizing he's right, and then drops her head into her hands.]

Dear gods, we're going to starve.

[the_caped_crusader]

[ he glances over from the dark pit of the trashcan, and for a moment, he thinks he can hear the jello whisper back to him. ]

They're seasonal in Greece, but you've eaten tuna before, I assume.

[monomachy]

[She tries not to look at the mess of jello in the garbage, but it's like a trainwreck, or like watching Barry eat something. One simply can't look away.]

Of course I've eaten tuna. Why?

[Please don't suggest entombing tuna in gelatin.]

always respect the dead.

[combatted]

[ He's been watching the house. ]

[ — No, that's not it. He's been watching the man in it, patiently, quietly, since he'd caught sight of him from a roof and needed to do a double-take. Bruce can wear so many faces; Dick remembers the makeup, the wardrobe down in the cave, the lessons. Throwing his voice, deepening it, where to probe, how to press — each and every memory. Instinct tells him something true, but observation has to confirm it. ]

[ He watches, and the man he thinks is Batman doesn't come to seek him out until the first cries of the attack — ]

[ Dick finds him in the living room, and somehow — this is the first thing in this insane town that makes any sense. He doesn't feel uneasy, distrustful, he looks at Bruce and feels calm. ]

I already have a Jack O'Lantern.

[ From next to the sofa, he draws a baseball bat. ]

Where are we going?

Re: always respect the dead.

[the_caped_crusader]

Carve it, light it, stick it on the doorstep.

[ bruce gets up from a kneel and wipes his bloody nose. these ghoulish kids are only down, not out, and he's quick to brush by dick and head for the doorway. whether he recognizes him as dick is left unrevealed, but that's nothing new. ]

We'll move to the next house. They aren't going to stay down for long.

[combatted]

[ Dick watches the alignment, how it slips into place. Recognition or not isn't as important — who they are and what they do together isn't so easy to change. Secretly, he's grateful — even different, unknown, certain things are there, the safety net below. ]

We can find some more and put them around the neighbourhood.

[ One sits on the bookshelf, half-carved already. Dick reaches for it. ]

[the_caped_crusader]

It'll be smarter if we gather what we can and take refuge inside one of the safe houses.

[ a few of the undead jump down from the rooftops and bruce takes a moments pause from their conversation to dispatch them quickly. they aren't really children, don't seem to have any sort of real consciousness, and they don't even really stay down, so he doesn't feel too bad not holding back. ]

They'll do whatever they can to keep us from carving them out in the open.

always respect the dead

[undiagnosed]

[despite the trouble they're giving him, archer is far more interested in losing the crazy kids than actually fighting them off. for someone who comes from a world where non-cyborg zombies aren't a thing, a normal world, he's not about to immediately jump to violence against children.

that being said, if they were adults, they'd all be put down by about now.

they're not, though, so archer is shoving one of them away with the curved part of his cane, then he's grabbed and yanked out the way by--] A less handsome clone?!

[yeah, that's what he's going with when he sees bruce's face. no thanks, no nothing except that comment and using the space to run off with him.]

[the_caped_crusader]

[ bruce is on his way to the next house, followed by this stranger who looks and sounds like a lower budget, less talented version of him. still, it's not the first thing about this situation that keeps his attention... that would be the group of undead children chasing after them. ]

You have the pumpkin, right?!

[undiagnosed]

Why would I have the goddamn pumpkin?!

[yeah, sorry, he missed that memo. archer swears as he breaks off, hopping over a picket fence and rolling to grab one off someone's porch, then breaks out in a brief sprint to shove it into bruce's hands.]

There! Christ!

[the_caped_crusader]

Because, I just explained the entire situation to y--[ he growls and grasps the pumpkin. ]

Forget it! Hopefully you can fight better than you can hear. Watch my back as I carve this stupid thing.

[undiagnosed]

Obviously I wasn't listening! [he snaps back, somehow managing to make that sound like bruce's fault.

that said, when bruce gets to work, archer is actually infuriatingly good at fighting. that's kind of his thing. he doesn't use lethal force on the kids, but he finds it incredibly easy to duck and weave through their uncoordinated attacks and push them back with his cane.

even if he does, briefly, forget it's not his tactlecane and has a major brainfart when it fails to fire a bean-bag round.

after a few minutes:] Are you hourly?! Jesus, these goddamn kids would pick that lock faster than you!

[yeah, he's still not paying attention to what bruce is doing.]

HALLOWEEN B

[covert]

[Sorry, neighbour's house, Dick's coming in via a formerly closed window, breaking out the glass with his back and swinging himself in, then straight back out to set his feet against the chest of a tiny Tinker Bell and send her flying into a perfectly manicured tree.

Dropping back through, he dusts glass off himself.]

You know, I feel a little bad out here punching zombabies.

[Something else is coming through the window, and he tosses a side table to knock it back.]

Think there's any alternative to the ancient wisdom of aiming for the head?

[the_caped_crusader]

Yeah, we all learned it as kids in Gotham.

[ bruce proceeds to follow up his hint with an answer by this is sparta-ing one of the growling undead children in the face. there's a sickening crack that follows, and the jaw seems to hang lifelessly from it's putrefying face as the "child" gurgles torpidly on the ground. ]

Hit and run.

[covert]

[Dick watches this. Looks down at the mess on the carpet. Well, at least it's not his house, his 'wife' would probably give him the same treatment at being asked to scrub brains off the floor.]

Yeah, much less disturbing than the punching, thanks.

[he investigates the fireplace, pulling out a poker just in time to spin and take it straight through the middle of a decomposing baby ghost.]

Don't come crying to me when one of these things leaves toothmarks in your ear.

[the_caped_crusader]

I see you haven't met any Jokerized Robins yet. I think you'll reconsider my tactics afterward.

[ another one goes through the window with another well placed kick. as the swarm begins to close in, bruce moves back to back with dick making him smirk. it reminds him of old days in gotham, surrounded by a bunch of chump thugs who didn't know any better. ]

We need to grab a pumpkin and get the hell out of here. The houses with the lit Jack O'lanterns are the only ones that are safe.

[covert]

Not yet, but it's always nice to have something to look forward to.

[You know, once all this fun is over. As pocket universes go, he'd been thinking he could stand to be in one with a little more action. What is it they say about being careful what you wish for?

He and Bruce work well as a 360 degree fighting machine, but the little monsters just keep coming. Working hard not to think that they used to be children, once, Dick reaches back to get his hands on Bruce's shoulder and lift himself into a spinning kick. It's a move he's used since he was in pixie boots. There's something reassuring about the classics.]

There's a pumpkin outside on the step. They painted it pastel polka-dots instead. [What can he say, some people don't understand traditions.] I think moving people to the safe houses could be quicker than trying to carve on the fly.