Test Drive 18

[sixthiteration]

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Test Drive

→ Holds and applications are always open. Holds are required for all applications.

→ Choose one of the scenarios below or make up your own. Feel free to try multiple scenarios.

→ Write LOGS or TEXT prompts, or both.

→ THERE ARE ONLY THREE RULES FOR THE TDM:

1. It has to take place in the 6I universe.
2. It cannot be the character's arrival into the game.
3. Please only test new characters who do not have a version in the game. Our cast list is here.

→ TDM threads cannot be used to meet AC, but if the character is accepted into the game and both players agree, you may keep the CR.

→ Character want ads are here.

Prompts

Summer is here, villagers! Sunny skies, warm weather and plenty of weirdness are on the horizon. Don't forget your sunscreen!

1. THE MILK FOR FREE - Somehow, someway, you have been wrangled into milking one of the GROFFLES recently rounded up by your fellow villagers. Maybe you felt guilty for not helping, or maybe you owe someone scary money. Point is, it's just you, a bucket, and your green milk-giving friend. Just a tip: Groffles are good-natured, but you probably shouldn't squeeze too hard.


2. LIGHTNING ROD - Earlier today, you made your way into the upper foothills — Were you hunting? Maybe just roaming? — and you came into contact with a BLUE LILY. Maybe you thought it was so pretty you've carried it back to the village with you. If your house didn't have electricity before, it definitely does now!


3. MEET CUTE - It's a classic: You've gone down into the 6I INN'S dirt-walled root cellar off the kitchen. Maybe you needed supplies or were dropping off some fresh produce. Whatever the case, someone's followed you down for a similar reason... and the door has jammed shut behind them. Seriously, it's not budging. Enjoy getting to know your new best friend in the cozy light of the furnace!


4. WILDCARD - Choose your own adventure. Maybe play powers roulette.

Texts

All characters are fitted with a smart watch-like device on their left wrist, which they can use to send text messages to other villagers.

- Texts may only be 140 characters long
- No video or voice, text only
- No usernames, everyone is listed by their name

Please list your CHARACTER NAME, CANON & PROMPT in your SUBJECT LINE.

Comments

[digging]

The specifics of what he's tapped out onto her arm Karen doesn't know, but the sentiment she understands well enough. There's always been the place between the words for them, the things that stayed unsaid even though they both could pick them out so clearly — Words hard to give voice to, especially for him. With as little time as they've actually spent physically together, she's gotten surprisingly good at interpreting his silences.

Which she supposes is why all of this has been so upsetting. It isn't really the silence that bothers her, it's that wall, one she thought she'd pulled down brick by brick, the one she'd thought after the last time she'd seen him back home, he wouldn't be able to build back again. These last days she's felt like such a fool, like one of the few truths she thought she could truly count on she'd gotten all wrong.

The tightness in her chest begins to ease and she turns her hand over to reach for his, callouses rough under her roaming fingertips. Morse code she doesn't know, but she thinks maybe that's okay, and traces a message cross the flat of his palm: U + ME OK?

[oorah]

He freezes when she reaches for his hand, breath stuttering audibly, something he wasn't sloppy enough to do even days ago. She makes him forget himself, a chill running cooly up his spine as she draws into his palm. Frank drags his eyes open to watch the message, though the slight tickle of her fingers makes it hard to focus. Gleaning what's being asked of him, he nods, throat suddenly drying up as if to prevent him from speaking though it was the last thing he wanted to do. He does nod though, a vacantly wan expression coming over his face as he picks his hand up from hers to arrange his fingers into the universal sign for Okay. He remembers teaching Eleven that symbol, all the kids eventually picking it up from him like vernacular. Frank wraps one hand around his other wrist and pitches forward even a little more once he's sure his message has sunk in, drawing comfort from the contact of their shoulders and telling himself he isn't.

Karen should be the one telling him that anyway - he knows he's the one who's broken. The one who can't find a way to function in this place unless it's raining hard enough to drown the rest out. "Have, uh." As promised, his voice is raspy and dull, but he's determined to churn out a sentence this time, pushing past the unpleasant scrape to start at the beginning. Though he's lost track of where the beginning really starts, anymore. "You ever heard of a place called Reims - France. Well. Rouen." Whichever. He supposes it really doesn't matter either way.

[digging]

The sound of his voice is so unexpected that it throws her, eyes rounding as they stare down at her hand, abandoned now, his own predictably drawn away under the pretense of answering her. It's a strange sort of question, too, and she falters, mouth briefly working before she manages to speak.

"Um," she begins, slowly, the syllable soft and tentative; he's asked her a question but she's still braced for him to cringe or draw away because she's dared to speak. "I think, maybe? It sounds familiar." Like it had been the site of a famous battle taught to them in school, or the setting for a novel she'd long ago forgotten, wartime struggles and hiding from the SS.

"Is that where you were?"

[oorah]

Is that where he was? No, not exactly, but also technically yes. His head starts a slow roll backward so he can meet her eyes, shifting his feet so they're sitting side-by-side again.

"Is Aretha gonna be okay out there?" Yes, he's still most worried about the dog. He couldn't go two steps without accounting for Max's whereabouts in Reims. But every noise he makes seems to hammer home that the Sound Eaters aren't coming. One of his boots lifts before slamming into the cement step. Not out of anger or frustration, but to hear the sound. The dog seems to hear it too and she barks, thinking her humans might be in danger. It's loud, but he doesn't flinch this time, instead knocking his boot again and getting her to bark some more. Maybe she can alert someone to their predicament after all, if only because Kate seems like she'd seriously hate him taking her door off the hinges. Even if he'd put it back together again. That can be Plan B.

Frank nods after a second, eyes darting around the room again but he stays close - mentally too. He's with her now, instead of trapped in memory. "Yeah. At least, I think so."

[digging]

"She's fine," Karen says, glancing over their shoulders to the jammed doorway with a faint hitch of a smile. "You trained her, and then I apparently came in after and screwed most of that up. But she's good." She looks back to Frank. "She'll settle down and wait." And maybe someone will see her and will figure out they're trapped down here, call the calvary.

"So," Karen begins again, folding her hands safely in her lap. "France?"

He hadn't sounded sure, but after everything she's been through here, it isn't difficult enough to imagine a scenario that seemed like France but absolutely wasn't. It had seemed like they were all trapped in a canyon, but weren't. Most days she wonders if they're even really here now.

[oorah]

Frank sighs and stops trying to rile up the dog. He trained her, because he was here before. Except he has no recollection of that. No connection to this place or the man who had come and gone. Though he knows the way these places work, that people forget, that they come and go against their will. He can't help but feel as though that guy abandoned Karen though, so he's angry at him. And angry at himself for not being like he was.

He nods, but he's looking down again. That's closer. An approximation of France that wasn't. Similar to this place, it claimed to be something it could never be; a real place. A place like they had come from.

"How long have you been here, Karen?" he'd been afraid to ask before. Though he'd only been in Reims a few months, so much had happened in that time. By comparison, a few weeks here felt so much longer. He found himself needing to fill time more than ever before.

[digging]

It takes Karen longer to answer than it honestly should were they anywhere else. She keeps track, has from the start, but time is strange here, and days get away from her more than entirely makes sense. The smart watch they have now helps some; the general idea of it she hates, of being tracked, but it does faithfully show the date.

She glances down at her wrist now in confirmation, then tilts her head, brow pinching as she calculates. It had been mid-December, she'd figured out, which means, "About six months. You were already gone, then," she adds. "In case you were wondering. Um. Matt was here, too, apparently."

Not for the first time, she wonders if he knows about Matt, who he was and what happened to him back home. That night with the Hand, and Frank suddenly simply there like some kind of dark savior on the next rooftop... She's never been convinced that was strictly on her account.

[oorah]

Six months. Not so different, then. If Frank was already gone, then he supposes he hadn't abandoned her, exactly. Or maybe that makes it worse, for her. He's afraid to ask that too. Matt. He pulls in a shallow breath and nods his understanding. His voice is becoming more whole the longer he uses it, but quieter by the moment. He's tired already from talking so little, but he knows these are important things. Things she'll want him to say aloud.

"But not with you." Matt and the Frank that wasn't him had both missed her, but now he's here with her. A version that probably isn't much help to her at all, but he still has to try and do what he can. She's still Karen Page, and even if it's by a technicality he's still Frank Castle. "There were people... where I was. Who had been to worlds? Places. Like this one, before they came to be where I was. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

He scarcely does though he'd had the conversation more than once on her side. His heavy gaze swings like a pendulum until it meets hers, only to nervously skitter away again.

[digging]

"I do," Karen quietly confirms with a short nod, her gaze tracking the way his restlessly shifts. "I don't know if we have any more of them here right now, but I do." Idly, she wonders if he realizes he's officially one of those people now, too.

"The disappearances... Did they happen where you were?" She has theories for all of this, many of them vague and none of them particularly comforting. "People come and go. Sometimes they come back and remember nothing, like you."

Kira's been her only real touchstone for this, but she's glad at least for their talks. She has at least some idea of how unsettling it is to find yourself in a strange place with strange people, only to discover the remnants of a life you lived there with them before. Veronica's diaries had been thorough, though, with Mark taking over where she'd left off, so Karen has a pretty good idea of how many times the same faces have come back around.

[oorah]

Frank nods with a measured little grunt in confirmation. He's officially tapped out for speaking and exhausted besides by the brief showing. He's thinking of Eleven, who he'd shared everything with; spent nearly every waking moment with her or Mike -- and then she'd gone. Only to come back and recollect none of it. If he hadn't been told by someone else she didn't remember, he isn't sure what would have happened. Jessica's voice now filters in over the din of the memory of a downpour. Kids?! What was he thinking, hanging out with them, protecting them, when he couldn't even protect himself? He swallows past a dry spot in his throat and rests his chin on his knee for a moment. Karen's theories are probably a thousand times more complicated than his, but in Reims he had had Micro to bounce every whim off of. He isn't even sure how to function without him now.

All he knows is that he doesn't want to become a "world-hopper" like Lavi and Sora. He was glad they had each other at the time, that they shared consistent memories of former places that weren't their homes. But now, when it's happening to him, it's disturbing. He isn't sure whether it makes him want his mayoral mansion in Reims or his couchbed at the Liebermans more. If he had any type of choice right now, this is when he'd be on his way. He thinks Karen knows that by the way he's ditched out on their prior conversations. One thing makes him grateful: that she was never in Reims with him. That he never had to protect her from Kilgrave or the horrors of the Sound Eaters. He swallows dryly and goes silent once again.

It isn't a silence of merely not speaking, but the full-bodied quiet of someone who lived that way day in and out. His breathing shallows out and movement stalls, as if becoming a mannequin with his face. He doesn't even move his face much, the twitch in his eyebrow that had been there this whole time smoothing out as he leans away from her again to slump against the stone wall. It's plain to see that he's completely wiped, but he's not banking on her curiosity abating any time soon. He'll have to tell her the whole story one day, or she'll unravel it for herself.