sixthiteration | Test Drive 18

→ 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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1 - MILK FOR FREE

Having a source of milk also meant having a source of butter and having butter meant that buttercream frosting could be made... Eventually... Hopefully... Maybe not. It was entirely possible that she would never again get to make and then eat frosting. Worse yet, she may never get to hear that noise people made when they tried one of her cupcakes and frosting for the first time. It was music to her ears.

That was one of her goals while stuck in this strange world, to make cupcakes in that sad little excuse for a kitchen. It was a selfish goal born of pride. Kate knew that and was choosing to do what she did best which was to ignore aspects that she didn't like.

Still, if she was going to do that Kate needed to get the milk first.

In what she hoped was a comforting manner, Kate patted the Groffle's shoulder as she moved past the animal. She then sat down her pail and stool before sitting down herself. It was only then that she realized that she didn't have a clue what she was doing. Kate had seen a cow being milked before but that was on television. Did she squeeze and tug? Should she pull and rub? She did not want to be kicked into oblivion or trampled on.

Bravado could only take her so far. Kate sighed and then stood. She knew someone else was in the barn, she could hear them. There were no sounds of distress from either the beast or the person, Kate assumed that the person knew what they were doing. She walked over and approached them.

"Excuse me, I hate to bother you but do you think you could show me how to do that?" Her smile was polite if hesitant.

3 - MEET CUTE

Kate had dried the herbs and plants herself. She had dried blackberry leaves, dried peaches and dried blackberry root. There were no berries because they had proven to be too delicious to give up. But what she had brought had uses! They could be made into teas, mouth washes and a few other things.

She made sure the door was wide open and would stay open before stepping into the cellar. Kate didn't like that the walls were made of dirt. She didn't like dirt but she supposed that as long as the dirt stayed in wall form, she could tolerate it. She was only going to be down there long enough to put away the supplies.

As she was putting the goods away, she heard footsteps. "Please make sure that door stays open," Kate called out just before hearing the door slam. Her brain processed that sound for a few moments before it dawned on her. No! No! NO! They She moved quickly to the door and then tried to push it open. The door would not budge. Kate twisted the handle. "It won't open. Why won't it open?"

Claustrophobia, thy name was Kate Cordello.

TEXT

1. Does anyone have any containers they'd be willing to part with temporarily? I want to start a garden.

2. Curious. What is the longest that anyone has been here?

Genn knew well enough what he was doing though if he was honest, this was the first time he actually did any such menial tasks personally. Still, it wasn't all that hard for him to put what he knew into practice and the groffle wasn't all that different from the cows back home, save for in looks so far.

Fortunately he had been finishing his own business with the beast as he heard her approach, only turning partially to look up at her once she'd voiced her question. "I can." He moved to claim the bucket beneath his own animal and set it up out of the way so it couldn't be carelessly overturned by accident. He trusted it'd remain there until his return, or he'd end up having to find the thief and give them a valuable lesson in why one did not steal, especially from a Gilnean.

"Where is your groffle?"

"Thank you." Kate was grateful that someone would show her how. "It's not something that I ever had to do back home." She offered as a way of explaining why she didn't know how to do it herself. "I usually buy it in a carton." With the scrubs, Kate had no way of knowing that someone wasn't from Earth. She was running on that assumption and was running right towards making an ass out of herself.

"It's this way, the first stall."

One eyebrow rose briefly at the word carton in relation to milk, but he says nothing about it as he follows her toward the indicated stall. Upon reaching it, Genn gestured for her to seat herself on the stool with one hand since it appeared that she at least prepared for the lesson at hand.

"Sit. I'll walk you through it." Yes, he was going for the hands-on approach here, and if necessary, he'd try giving her an example to follow after her first attempt. "First off, relax. Animals pick up on far more than you realize. If you're nervous, you're apt to end up making the animal you're with nervous as well."

And no one wanted to be around a nervous cow or groffle.

Edited 2018-06-19 01:45 (UTC)

Kate sat down. She opened her mouth the argue that she was not nervous but it would have been a lie. "I don't want to do it badly." She offered as yet another explanation, an explanation that happened to be true.

She exhaled and then inhaled a deep breath. Kate tried to relax a little more. No one wanted to be around a nervous animal capable of both shitting and trampling on a person. A person might not want to be around Genn after Kate's next question. "So, are you a farmer?" She was a City girl. People who grew food extensively on their own land or who raised livestock all fell under the generic moniker of farmer. "You seem to know what you're doing?"

Once she'd sat down, Genn had moved to kneel beside her. He kept his silence despite her silent protest and the following explanation. Waiting until she had managed to relax some, he'd been about to begin his own explanation about how to begin when she asked her question.

Despite knowing there was no way she could actually know whom she was talking to, and likely his name and title would mean little regardless, he gave her a quiet deadpan look for a brief moment before he answered in a flat tone. "No."

Turning away back toward the Groffle, he quietly continued to stamp down on the irrational ire caused by the silly question so it wouldn't be obvious in his tone and upset his makeshift student any more than his earlier look possibly had. "My people raise horses, sheep and hunt. One learns how to deal with them if only via observation when they're surrounded by it."

Edited 2018-06-19 03:14 (UTC)

Kate knew she had asked the wrong question or had at least phrased it badly. It was in his look. It was in the flatness of his reply. Briefly, her mouth flapped open to apologize but she swiftly shut it again. He wasn't bringing it up to correct her. She didn't want to make it worse by continuing to bring it up and yet she wanted to apologize. What was she going to apologize for exactly?

Instead, she said nothing except to sit and listen to Genn speak. His people raised horses and sheep. He was surrounded by it. He watched his people raise them. Oh. "I see." What else could she say?

"Thank you again." There was a pause before she added, "My name is Kate, by the way."

Beverly is here for a similar reason, mostly to drop off a few herbs from her garden that could be used for teas. The calming variety and not anything she would want to keep a close eye on the administration of. Some of her plants have side-effects and she wants to keep an eye on who gets what of those. But things like chamomile she's comfortable enough dropping off into the Inn's stores.

Besides, chamomile makes a great tea all by itself.

She'd thought there was someone else behind her when she'd first passed through the doors, so she hadn't paid too much attention to it until she felt it swing a little. By the time she realizes there's no one to catch it and moved to stick her foot out to stop it, she's a little too late. The door shuts with a resounding thud.

"Sorry. I couldn't quite catch it," she says apologetically, shifting down and out of the way so she can set the basket aside and head back up. Only by that point, the door is stuck tight and the other person is trying frantically to turn the knob. It doesn't sound good at all. A combination of her doctor side and her motherly nature has her moving closer. She's been in worse situations than stuck in a cellar, so if something is desperately wrong here, she's one of the better ones to be stuck with.

"It'll probably open in a few minutes," she offers, her voice calm and steady. "Nothing lasts too long here."

Because seriously, even if the Observers might want to jinx them for that, they've never been mean enough to lock anyone down in a place like this for longer than an hour or so or without an exit.

Kate moved away from the door by backing up. Her hands were up, palms out, and her fingers splayed. "It's not your fault." She said quickly with her mind racing just as face.

The problem was not with Beverly it was with Kate. The door was just stuck shut. She was overreacting. It was nothing! Someone was going to open that door any minute. Someone was going to open that door any minute now and release them from their dirt-walled prison. "Right. Any minute now." Kate agreed but neither looked nor sounded like she agreed.

Beverly might not have seen this sort of reaction much here, but she would be a terrible doctor if she couldn't diagnose a classic fear response. As the other woman backs up, Beverly quickly takes her own turn at the door. It won't budge for her, either. Rather than keep beating at it, she turns back to the other person with her.

"Try to keep breathing deeply," she coaxes calmly, moving a little more into the woman's line of sight and reaching out with one arm, to give Kate something else to focus on. And to hold onto, if Kate is okay with a slightly more tactile offer of comfort. "My name is Beverly. I'm one of the doctors here. You're in good hands until that door opens, okay?"

"It's been a minute." She said. Her eyes were focused on the door and doing the very opposite of what she had been instructed to do, breathe. "The door's not open." Kate didn't realize that she was holding her breath until Beverly touched her arm.

She didn't withdraw from her hand and it did cause her to expel the breath that she had been holding. "I'm Kate and I really need that door to open."

Here? A few months. But we were all in a similar place before that. Oldest I know of has been here about 2 years.

Two years and they couldn't find a way out?

Gran Pulse had much weirder animals than whatever this place was called - Fang understood why they didn't have a name yet, but at the same time it felt weird to be staying so long in a place without one. Names meant something to Gran Pulse natives; it was why she and Vanille had hidden theirs upon awaking in Cocoon. But animals she could deal with. Usually she was stabbing them, but these guys they didn't want to stab. These guys they wanted for milk, possibly transportation, and maybe meat when they were too old to be good for anything else.

Looking up when Kate approached, hand resting on the shoulder of one of the beasts and a clearly homemade spear over her shoulder, Fang tilted her head at the other woman inquisitively. "Never had to take care of an animal, have you?" It was phrased as a question, but her broad accent that Kate would probably think of as Australian definitely made it into a statement.

"I had a Poodle," Kate replied defensively to whom she assumed was an Australian. "But you don't exactly milk those."

With no idea what a Poodle was, Fang simply shrugged and turned back to the furry beast in front of her. "It's not so hard, really. Biggest thing is to show 'em you're not scared of them. They get nervous when they feel you are." She clearly wasn't scared, but she'd hunted (and been chased by) much bigger things than this. A herd animal wasn't any sort of big deal after a wyvern. "Come over here, let this one get used to your scent. Once they're familiar with you, they're a lot less twitchy."