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October 2018 Test Drive Meme

OCTOBER 2018 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to October’s Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: HALLOWEEN HORROR.

All Test Drive Memes contain at least one clue to the Deerington's upcoming in-game events for the month! Keep your eyes peeled! But...not literally.

Characters may die during TDMs, but you do not need to count it towards a game-canonical death unless you want to. Consider it a freebie. All TDMs can be considered game canon as TDMs introduce minor aspects about the world of Deerington that can be revisited by characters later on in the game. You may also use TDMs for your application writing sample as well as AC.

CW: Wet and rotting corpses/zombies, ghosts, violence, blood, knives, possessed dolls, options for underage drinking

Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

IT’S JUST A BUNCH OF HOCUS POCUS

It’s not Halloween if you don’t make a trip to a cheesy haunted house. At least, that’s what everyone in Deerington likes to say. The old Victorian stands at the top of a hill, rickety and in desperate need of a new paint job. The yard and porch have been decorated with what you’d expect for your typical haunted house; fake spider webs spread across the overhang, painted foam grave markers with cheesy names like “Here lies Richard Cranium” and “BEWARE!!” in creepy letter etchings. You can see the blinking of variously timed strobe lights in some windows and the shadow of what you’re pretty sure is a full-sized doll standing in the window, meant to look like someone staring out at you. The rocking chair on the porch near the door has a skeleton with a bowl of candy in his lap, and a sign is propped up against the wall next to him.

“ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. TOUCH NOTHING AND NOTHING WILL TOUCH YOU!”

Well that sounds promising.

The first few rooms you enter are appropriately cheesy. There’s the silly burst of air that you hear just before a plastic figuring pops out of a poorly constructed coffin, the clicking sound of the machinery inside echoing in the room when it starts to pull back and the lid closes once again. There’s fog machines trying to give the appropriately spooky air, stuffed sheets shaped to look like dead bodies wrapped up laying in piles on the floor with fake blood staining the white fabric, black lighting to show off words scribbled on doors like “TURN BACK NOW” and “SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES.” Nothing you haven’t seen before. It might be even worse than things you’ve seen before, over the top cheesy, boring enough to give a yawn. Each door seems to open on its own so you don’t even have to touch the handles.

As you make your way through the next automatic door, the room you walk into is different than those before it. It’s a regular children’s room. A bed against the wall near the window, a dresser in the corner, a small desk with a chair. Nothing out of the ordinary, save for the lights not being on, and the strange flickering light in the closet. You step towards it, figuring you’re in for another jump scare, but the door doesn’t open. Whether you’re naturally the curious sort or not, something in the back of your mind makes you want to open the door and see what’s on the inside.

If you fight it and walk towards the next automatic door, you’ll find you’ve walked out to the backyard of the house, those same foam decorations and a dozen or more jack o’ lanterns lighting your way on a path back to the town.

If you choose to pull the door open, however, it’ll take you into yet another room, with a flickering television playing nothing but static. Once you step past the doors of the closet, they slam shut behind you and whoever else dared to enter. The doors won’t lock no matter what you do, no matter how strong the person shaking the handles or pushing against the wood may be. You realize you broke the one rule; you’ve touched something. But can things now really touch you?

The only light source in the whole room is that television and it’s not lighting up much inside the room around it. If you squint when the TV is at its brightest setting, you can just make out another door. Your exit, you hope. But as you make your way towards the door, the flickering suddenly stops, the TV steadily bright, a low humming noise coming from the screen, and suddenly the door seems several more feet away from you than it was a second ago. Before you can reach the door, there’s the sound of trickling water from behind you. If you choose to look back, you’ll see something coming out from the screen - a girl with soaked clothing and pale, rotted skin. She emerges fully from the glass and starts to move towards you. You know it’s best to start running for that door. If you stay and try to fight, you’ll find that no regular weapons work on her, though special weapons and powers that are effective against spirits will definitely do the trick. For those who don’t have any of these at their disposal, however, there is one more hope besides just trying to run; two old school VHS tape sit on the table near by, a fancy machine between them that is meant to copy one to the other. Work as a team and have one distract her while the other records, and you’ll find that she disappears as quickly as she flickered on the screen and the TV will return to static.

Regardless of what you choose before carrying on, the next room you come to as the door slams and locks behind you is entirely different. Brightly lit and filled with what seems like hundreds of porcelain dolls, it’s almost hard to tell where there could possibly be another exit hidden among the massive shelves. You can start to wind your way through them, but before long, you start to hear the sound of running feet, the jingling of bells, the swish of satin, and most eerily the sounds of children giggling - but there’s nothing that sounds save about them. Some of the dolls you saw on the last shelf seem like they’ve moved and are sitting in the corner or laying in a new position on a new shelf. Sometimes you swear you can see their heads turn to watch you pass, but it has to be a trick of the light, doesn’t it?

That is until one of those dolls runs by you, brandishing something shiny in their hands - something sharp. A knife, you realize too late, as it tries to slice at your legs and knock you down. You can kick them away and they’ll go flying, and when the porcelain smashes, the doll will scream in agony. You notice there’s blood pouring from the hole that formed, spreading quickly across the ground. The dolls are easy to kill, but are they really just dolls? You can take your time to contemplate that later, as now you have to fight your way through the violent and armed toys to reach the door at the end of the maze of shelves. Hopefully you can get out without too many severe injuries.

When (or if) you do manage to get to the next room, you seem to have a chance to take a breath and tend to any wounds. It’s decorated like the room of a small cottage, a large pot over the fireplace that isn’t lit, and several jars full of (possibly rotting) food and herbs on the shelves. You see a book on the stand in the center, latched shut and covered in dust. You can open it, if you want, but remember the warning you ignored that got you in trouble in the first place. It’s probably better to carry on to the next room.

If you do choose to open the book, though, there will be eerily glowing text lining the pages, the light will seem to poor out and fill the room, and you’ll be transported back out in front of the house.

Those who continued through the door will find themselves out in the backyard. Just like for those who got out sooner, there are dozens of jack o lanterns, but the graves don’t look like they’re made of foam this time. They’re real stone, engraved with real names and real dates this time. And the ground underneath them seems to be moving, like someone’s trying to crawl out of there. Better not to wait around. Soon as you start to move down the path, you’ll start to hear the sounds of groans as the undead start to crawl from their own graves, pulling themselves up through the dirt, and determined to get to the only food source they see - you. The zombies seem like they’re never ending, coming from every inch of the yard, but at least they’re just like normal zombies - completely incapable of being killed unless you cut off the head. There are shovels lying next to a few graves if you need a quick weapon, but there’s also still always the option to run as fast as you can up the stone path to the front of the house and back towards the street.

When you do finally manage to get back to the front, there’s a momentary blinding flash of light, disorienting anyone near it for a few seconds. When it finally fades, any leftover zombies chasing you have disappeared and the house looks like the same, cheesy haunted house you walked up to in the first place. If for some reason you decide to go and explore the backyard again, the grass will be back to normal, and the graves will all be replaced by cheaply painted foam once more.

Was that all in your head? Who knows. But maybe it’s best to just get out of here.

WE DID THE MASH

Somehow the street lamps have all been converted to oil based flames, the Authority are in witch hats, and every where you go there is music that seems to be playing from faintly glowing bats hanging upside down from telephone wires. The bats will open their mouths in succession, seeming somehow capable of producing the sounds of instruments and singers alike of popular Halloween songs.

Yards are decorated as thoroughly as the front of stores. Maybe you haven't bothered to decorate, but your neighbor sure has! Fake gravestones are propped up in yards, giant fake spiders in trees, and no matter where you walk, the ground seems covered in thick, rolling fog from machines. Or at least you hope it's coming from machines. Hell, you can't even find it in yourself to be too worried! Everyone around you is having way too good of a time! And God, there is food everywhere! Might as well grab a bite while you're out, huh?

It's tempting to break loose and dance. Jack-O-Lanterns absolutely crowd the streets. There's more than you can even begin to count, and all of them are lit all throughout the night. Even if you accidentally trip over some, they don't seem to catch fire to anything or go out! Some neighbors have camp fires set up with marshmallows to roast, while others have...are those broomsticks? Well that's kinda cool, you guess. Correction: it's really cool since you can actually pick one up and take it for a fly! Make sure to attach a little lamp to the front though because God knows it's dangerous flying at night. The brooms only work if you wear the appropriately provided hats, of course, but you can keep both the broom and hat indefinitely and have a readily available means of flight in Deerington after! Be forewarned though: the brooms are as easily broken as regular brooms and the hats easily blown away in the wind.

TRICK OR TREATS

At any of the events, especially the nighttime partying, you can find any number of the following treats (and their potential side effects):

Donuts (Will make you deliriously happy. Everything is amazing to you. May cause a lot of affection. A lot of affection.)
Candy Apples (You will eagerly tell someone everything you like about them. Talk about a sweet tooth.)
Candy Corn (Will make you extremely sad. Like god, you'll be wondering why you hate yourself so much.)
Pumpkin Spice Lattes (Causes suspicious amounts of obedience and a desire to do what you're told.)
Hot Chocolate (Can provide some minor healing. Best stuff to drink with a common cold!)
Hot or Cold Apple Cider (Nothing will happen. It's just really good.)
Alcoholic Cider (This isn't your grandma's apple cider. This stuff will knock you on your ass. Anyone who drinks this will get wasted regardless of whether or not they are immune to alcohol or even ingest regular food. It only takes one or two before you start to get tipsy, but any more than that and you'll be well on your way to drunk. Please drink responsibly. We don't need any FUIs.)

Character Arrival

You can read how all characters arrive in Deerington here.

There is not a collective "all these characters showed up at the exact same moment" occurrence in Deerington. Since characters fall asleep, die, or pass out at various times throughout all their worlds, it wouldn't make too much sense if they arrived in game all at the exact same time. There should be some discrepancy between character arrival, whether by a couple minutes, hours, or even days up to a week.

The players are entirely in control of how/when they want to play their characters arriving in Deerington. For TDMs, you can play it like your character has just arrived and that can be maintained as your game canon, or you can wait until game events for that moment. Or you don't need to acknowledge it at all. The flexibility for character allows a bit more of an organic feel to the character arrival situation, so please play it to whatever feels right for you.

If you are interested in having an "arrival" introduction for one of your TDM prompts, you are more than welcome to explore that option.

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Transigen, she says. The name's not familiar in the least, but he files it away regardless for future use. Transigen, at least, isn't the Weapon X program, and though his upper lip curls with distaste now that he knows who's hurt her, he's careful to wait a few beats before speaking again lest he start growling.

If he ever finds his way back home, he's finding them and ripping them apart.

"Once is a good number," he says instead, eyes facing forward if only so she doesn't see how hard it is for him not to look angry. "You're 180 years younger than..." He clears his throat, trying again (and sounding all the more awful for it, given the terrible accent). "Tu es... uh. Ciento ochenta años menor."

Managing a small chuckle, he shakes his head. "If you can't tell, I can't speak Spanish for shit."

But he remembers Charles telling him that children are more comfortable less because of the language and more because you try. Logan's always made a fool of himself when he did, but he figures that of all the kids for that to be okay around, then... his daughter ought to be the most qualified one.

Even if it's hard to wrap his mind around it still. Daughter.

The circumstances are something he'll have to sit down and really think about for a while after this.

"You should pick a birthday," he says offhandedly. By now Laura should be able to see the park in the distance, which means his house isn't too far off now. "It can be any day you want."

"Why?" Laura understands the importance of knowing when you're a year older when it comes to being able to train and go through tests. But she doesn't quite grasp why he wants her to claim a day as her own. But she shrugs anyway and tries thinking it over. Maybe she can come up with a decent day to have a birthday.

"When is your birthday?" She curiously wonders, leaning over so her cheek is pressed against his.

The fact that he doesn't speak Spanish isn't lost on her. She knew he didn't before seeing him here. Talking in English isn't her native language and she has some difficulties, but she's learning quickly and doesn't mind talking to him this way.

"Porque...because you are old." And maybe it might be a better special day if they share the same birthday. Assuming he can even remember when it is.

Laura's cheek is so soft. Not that Logan's skin isn't the same-- the healing factor made sure of it-- but she's round like a child, and even around the smell of blood, this close he can smell that she's a child, too.

He lets out a 'heh', though. "Yeah, I'm old," he agrees, not even bothering to fight it. "I was born fifth of April, 1832. Kind of makes you a baby."

They reach his home then with the ridiculous, gigantic hole in the wall of the kitchen, and though it'd be easier to enter through there, Logan takes Laura through the front door instead. He makes sure to bend so she doesn't bump her head. "But birthdays..."

The house looks like it can't decide to be neat or messy, which is the result of Logan wanting to clean up Henry's junk without touching too many things. But at least it doesn't smell rotten any more, and Laura will find that Logan's scent is subtle, but practically everywhere with how he cleans regularly.

He reaches the landing to the stairs, and just as he takes the first step up, he finally explains, "You're special, Laura. There's no-one else like you in the universe.

"And it took a lot of luck, suerte, to get you here."

Reaching the door to the bathroom, he crouches on the floor to let Laura off, but not without looking back and up at her with a half-smile. "Birthdays're weird. Only people celebrate them.

"But you're a person, Laura. Sometimes you're gonna think you're an animal, and sometimes people'll tell you you're a weapon, but they're all wrong.

"You're important. And a birthday celebrates how important you are."

His telling her this isn't new. He told her to be more than a weapon, to not be what they made her. Sometimes it's hard to imagine a life where she isn't a weapon, or treated as an animal. But he makes it easier. In moments like this one, where he has her in a home and he's taking care of her, it's easy to act like this is where she's meant to be. He's her father, and he wants her, and everything's going to be alright.

"Important," she slowly repeats, nodding in understanding. He thinks she's important, even if she doesn't feel the same way.

They're in a bathroom, clearly meant for her to clean up. But she's curious about this house and the girl he says lives here, so she creeps over to the doorway and peeks out into the hall. "Maybe..." She speaks as she sniffs at the air, nose wrinkling before she turns back in to look at him.

"April 5 would be good for me too."

She moves to the tub then, going to turn it on so she can watch the water fill it.

Logan's quiet. His heart warms, prickling from where it lies in his ribcage ever outward towards his fingertips, and he thinks about sharing his birthday with his daughter, and feels like someone's dumped love into him with an ice cream scoop.

Then he leans over, plugging the tub in to make sure the water doesn't drain.

"Smart idea," he says, giving Laura a pat on the shoulder as he kneels by the tub at her side. "We'll save money if we share a cake."

He's not sure if attachment this early into knowing your biological father is normal. He's not sure where Laura's love, unconditional as it is, and admiration comes from. But as someone who tends to need more concrete reasons to be a better person, he thinks this is the biggest reason he'll ever have.

Even if Logan's not sure she isn't a trick of the mind, it's hard not to fall a little in love with her, blood and all.

"There's some bubble bath in here," he says, reaching for the bottle and showing it to her. Logan even pops the cap off so she can get a whiff of it. He doesn't know if Henry uses it, but decides that he'll sit through her bitching if it'll make Laura smile. "You ever have a bubble bath before, Laura?"

It won't be long before she ends up telling him all about his future self and how they meet, but for now she's simply content forming new happy memories in place of the trauma. He pulls out the bubble bath and she goes over to curiously sniff at the bottle, nose wrinkling up at the overpowering scent. Her head shakes at his question, and she reaches up to tug and grab the bottle out of his hands. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the bubbles get dumped in the water, and she dumps about half the bottle in to watch and see what it does.

The bubbles instantly start to form and she makes a soft gasp, fascinated as she crouches down to stick her bloody hand inside. She waves it through the suds and water, watching as the red washes off and stains the bubbles pink. That's enough motivation to start undressing, throwing her blood stained clothes at his face so he won't see her as she finishes and leaps right into the tub.

She's eleven and doesn't particularly need him here for this part of things, so she points at the door and makes a grunting sound to signal that he needs to go. She can handle this on her own and find him once she's done.

Yeah, the faceful of clothes tells him enough. Logan looks at them, thinks miserably about how much blood he's going to have to scrub off, and then says, "I'll leave some clothes for you by the door."

He's sure she'll be able to tell which towel is his and which one is Henry's. Logan realises he'll have to add "things for Laura" onto the ever-growing list of shit to buy on his refrigerator.

The clothes he lays out on the table by the bathroom door are just one of his shirts (plain powder blue) and a new pair of plaid boxer shorts he's never worn, and for the first time he finds himself thankful for the people who'd dragged him out to go shopping. He doesn't have anything sized for kids and doesn't think he'll be able to pilfer something from Henry without being punched in the dick for it, so these'll have to do for now.

In any case, Logan's first order of business will be scrubbing the blood out of Laura's clothes under the sink in the kitchen. He'll see if he can't salvage it yet.

(If he goes through a minor undocumented breakdown without anyone around then. Well. If a tree falls in a forest...)

She takes her time in the bath, cleaning herself and exploring the feeling of splashing around in bubbles. Back at Transigen, she had been rushed through the showers. Now, she gets to enjoy herself and get to know what playing and splashing in the bath until the water goes cold feels like. When she finally does finish, she messes with the drain until she figures it out, then scales out of the tub.

Instead of using a towel right away, she shakes herself and gets the entire bathroom wet. The towel comes next to finish up getting dry, and then she steps out in the hallway so she can get the clothes he left for her. They're way too big on her but she ties things off and folds sleeves up, and then she's off, plodding along through the house to explore. He can probably hear the sound of her feet hurrying along, until eventually she runs downstairs to find him.

"Need new clothes," she tells him flatly, hopping right up on the counter to sit beside the sink so she can watch him work.

By the time he hears Laura's footsteps, he's more or less gotten a hold of himself, though there's sweat on his brow that wasn't there before. It probably shows in his scent-- a slight pungent tone to it that shows he'd been worrying-- but he hopes she computes it as worry for the shirt, which he's stopped scrubbing with cold water and soap to make the deep red now just the faintest pink.

Laura sits close to him, and Logan looks up at her so she knows he's noticed her, brow raised. "You want to go out shopping?"

He's making a corn starch mixture now with water, spoon moving quickly and evenly in the bowl. Once it's diluted properly, he pours some out onto the worst of the stains. He gets the merit of new clothes, but saving these ones gave him something to do while he weighed the changes he'd have to make in his life now that he had a daughter to take care of, the things he had to consider.

(And he was far, far out of his league.)

Leaning in briefly to get a whiff of her, he lets out a soft huff through his nostrils after. "Smell nice." Then he goes to lay the shirt out in the sunshine that filters down from the hole in the kitchen wall. The jeans, which he'd scrubbed out too, undergo the same treatment.

"I think I know a store." More or less. "You wanna do that today, or do you want something to eat?"

She stays still long enough to let him lean in and get a sniff of her, but then she's hopping off the counter to explore the kitchen. She's already looking for food when he starts to talk, and she huffs in frustration as she tries to find boxes of cereal like he had at his home in El Paso.

"Both," she grumbles as her impatience sets in, and she starts slamming cabinet doors as she peeks inside each one only to find dishes or other useless things. When she finds the bowls she grabs one and sets it down on the counter, brushing past him as her great cereal hunt continues.

"Food now." She demands, whipping about to face him with a demanding little look that says she has no problem bossing him around.

"Whoa." It's like watching a whirlwind move around his already considerably destroyed kitchen. Laura walks around like she owns the place, and she talks even more like it.

It's endearing, tugging at his heart. It reminds him a little bit of Victor before he lost his mind.

But instead of smiling, Logan narrows his eyes at her. "Where's your 'please', huh?" He's moving to the refrigerator, but instead of opening the freezer like he intends to, he crosses his arms over his chest instead and leans his bicep against it. "'Por favor'?"

Ugh.

Here comes the part where he tries to fix her manners and how she behaves. She's used to it, but still feels the need to stare up at him with a look that could kill. On the inside however, she's pleased that he's making the effort to try doing this. It makes her feel wanted when he corrects what she does, even while at the same time it infuriates her.

"Please." She flatly growls, hand slamming down against the nearby countertop. A single eyebrow arches after that, as if to ask if that's good enough for him.

Man, even the way she growls hits a spot in his chest, even though Logan curls his lip and allows a low growl of his own to show he doesn't care for rebellion. "You gotta learn how to say it like you mean it," he says, but relents for now.

Unfortunately for Laura, the household doesn't have cereal yet (he and Henry are terrible at stocking). But it does have Hot Pockets, which Logan pulls from the freezer. He shows her the box and its label briefly; it's pepperoni flavoured. "Hot Pockets."

Then he takes a piece out of all its packaging and pops it into the microwave.

"Listen, so you can make this on your own." Pointing to the timer knob, he brings it all the way to two minutes. "You turn this to two." Both his index and middle are held up in representation. "That's two minutes. Then you wait for it to finish."

Logan figures Laura's not going to appreciate that, but places his hand on the counter by hers as he looks down at her with a raise of his brow in a perfect mirror image. He's daring her to challenge his (mediocre) wisdom, a little bit, but it's really just for show.

She rolls her eyes but does pay attention, sniffing at the air as the hot pocket cooks in the microwave. Letting her use the thing on her own is potentially dangerous, but she does try to observe how it works. Sometimes she can be patient, usually when she's curious. Right now, she's insanely curious about how the small box makes food in two minutes.

Eventually she glances back his way, startled by the look he's giving her. His face looks so much like her own that it surprises her, and she quickly glances away to glare over at the microwave. She ends up stretching her arm out along the edge of the counter and plopping her chin down to rest on it.

She stays that way for the entire two minutes until the timer goes off, when her head pops up and she hurries to try and get the microwave door open. She reaches right on in to try and grab it. The heat doesn't register with her right away, but when it does she hisses and snarls, dropping the hot pocket on the counter.

"Why did you make it so hot?" Because apparently, this is all his fault.

Ignoring the blame that she puts on him, and furthermore deciding explanation might work better than scolding, he asks, "Are you okay? Your fingers burnt?" instead. But once that's done, Logan takes a saucer from one of the drawers and picks up the poor, neglected Hot Pocket off the counter. He places it at the centre of said saucer promptly and unceremoniously.

"And I made it hot because it was frozen," comes his answer, finally. And with that, he moves to open the freezer, taking the box out once more and showing her the inside. "You can eat frozen things, sure, but it's easier on the teeth if it's warm." Then the box goes back where it belongs. "Usually tastes better, too."

Making a cock of his head, he puts the saucer with the Hot Pocket on the kitchen table in front of the seat Laura had taken up. The empty bowl is still there, so he picks it up to put it away. "If it's still hot, you can use this fork to cut it up and blow-- gently" -- there's emphasis there, but more patient than irritated, and Logan hands Laura a single fork -- "before you shove it in.

"Or you can just blow 'till it's cool enough to pick up."

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