Test Drive: AUGUST

[empevents]

— TEST DRIVE: AUGUST —

Welcome to empatheias' test drive meme. This test drive is to help interested players test their characters in the game's environment. We've included a few prompts that incorporate specific elements of the game, though you'll find all of them have a lot of leeway for players to get as creative as necessary. Before diving in, here are a few things we'd like to remind everyone about the game in general:

• Date reminders. Reserves open 25 July and Applications (Canon | OC) open a week later on August 1st. Apps will only be open for four days!
  
  
• OC Reminder! Just a quick reminder that original characters are allowed. Those interested can also use the test drive. OCs do not need to be reserved.
  
  
• Emotions are key! Empatheias' premise focuses on how anyone's emotions can affect their environment, be it big or small. While not every emotion will cause a reaction, significant ones definitely will. How much effect a character will have will ultimately be up to you, the player. Also, while we're giving a lot of leeway for the test drive, keep in mind that there will be some limits in the actual game.
  
  
• Everyone has an amulet. All characters have a unique amulet that is specialized for them. It will contain all of their emotion drops and it serves as the network device. Remember, communication is telepathic. Otherwise, it works basically the same.
  
  
• Assume the character is already in the game. Because "OMG WHERE AM I IS THIS REAL LIFE" threads aren't going to be very helpful in this test drive! Plus, those are going to happen in-game, anyway. So to make things easier, just assume that they've been around at least a week or so. Still learning the ropes, but not a complete "first day" experience.
  
  
• First or third person allowed. Your threads can be in either first or third, but we'd advise being flexible about it. Remember, these threads can also be used in your application for samples! Reminder: We only require one sample and it can be done in either format. We have also made a change to our sample requirements, so look over the Applications page!
  
  
• Transfer to in-game. If accepted, you can assume threads made on the Test Drive happen in-game if the scenario can reasonably fit. For new characters, these threads do not count for activity check. However, these can be supplementary threads for players already in-game.
  
  
• For your threads, put the Character Name and the Canon in the subject line to help readily identify them. You're also welcome to use more than one prompt for respondents to choose from. If you have any questions or want to brush up on the game information, refer to the Game Information entry. Otherwise, tag around and have fun!
  
  
  Now with that out of the way, here are some prompts you guys can work from!

PROMPTS

• Prompt A: How about giving the emotions a try?

• Prompt B: Refer to the Task Board and choose a task your character may be interested in taking up. For this prompt, you could have your character ask for help, already be in the middle of the job, or react to it in some way. Perhaps they were an unfortunate victim or want to create a job countering an existing one. You could even have a prompt making a job request. Creating jobs for the purpose of the test drive is absolutely doable.

• Prompt C: How about giving the amulets a go? Start a telepathic conversation and see how it works. Remember, the amulets are sending out the owner's thoughts so might want to be careful about how the stream of consciousness goes...

• Prompt D: Mystery boxes have begun to turn up not only on people’s doorsteps but also anywhere they go - at their workplaces, dropped off on their cafe tables, even falling out of trees or windows right in front of them. There is nothing special about the boxes themselves - nothing is written on them and they are made out of generic cardboard - but they may contain items such as a set of cute furry animal figurines, a ring of old tarnished keys, or a fancy but stained secondhand fedora. Others, however, have more sinister, mysterious contents, such as a black coat with a muddy hem, a blood-spattered kitchen knife or even what looks like a severed bloody finger. Ask around about who has been leaving these boxes all over the place, and you will get conflicting reports. Otherworlders lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a person suddenly in a hurry to leave the scene will learn that this person behind the mystery boxes can appear as a man, or a woman, or neither.

• Prompt E: Receiving a mystery box has its pros and cons. Some items give so much emotion and energy to a person, exaggerating everything they feel and think. It's a good thing at times, because when one is happy, they truly are HAPPY! When one feels like they're on top of the world, they may end up floating! However, there are instances in which the other person feels like they're drowning due to sadness, in which case, they may feel like they're underwater and need air to breathe. Don't worry! In times like these, all you need is a slap in the face to make you feel better! Or if that's too physically hurtful, others have discovered that crying stops the hyperbole of emotions, too.

• Prompt F: Investigations eventually lead to the founder of the cryptocurrency EmoGold who goes by the pseudonym "Sato" to be the one sending out mystery boxes to people. It seems the emotional currency has taken a dive in terms of exchange rate between EmoGold and Sylvs that he thought giving out mystery boxes to people would make them want to learn more about EmoGold and mining… sadly that didn't work and only proceeded to creep people out! "Sato" is now under custody of the Enforcers, and all the furniture in his house (strange and unique as they may be) is now up for auction! A lamp that looks like a cow and shoots light out of its eyes for 5,000 sylvs going once… going twice… SOLD!

• Prompt G: Make your own! It could include forks and/or snow.

Comments

[smallkindnesses]

No sad Kevins, on her watch! Just seeing him cringe like that makes her all the more resolute to make this into a good situation. It's only a good thing that it's not that hard--far from disappointment, his answer brings relief. He knows the family waiting for him, and he's only been waylaid. Someday he'll feel all that she feels, it's just not yet. That's good enough. The air around her becomes spring-like and golden, wrapping around them both like a blanket.

"Then, there's a whole new you for me to come to know!"

Her hands settle on his shoulders, again, then slide down his arms to clasp his hands, and she makes a bit of a show of studying him again. The hair, the colorful clothing, once more, remembering the chirping conversation between himself and the girl behind the counter. There's hardly a trace at all of the man who'd one day materialize on their basement floor, half-feral and in a pool of his own blood. No, it looks like he's found some path to all the best parts of himself, in this place, even without them. There's something strangely comforting about that.

"Look at you!" She murmurs, proudly. "Look how you've bloomed!"

And almost the same moment she says it, she notices the ring--a tiny, living rose, where a wedding band should be.

Annnnnd there's the 'girl switch' flipped, and another shower of sparkles comes with it. She looks up at him, her eyes going wide with excitement.

"And you've not been all alone..!"

And above all, at the end of Shelly Rainsworth's day, that is the most important thing of them all: someone has taken good care of him. Apples forgotten, she loops her arm resolutely through his and steers him to the nearest unoccupied table. There's gossip to be had!

"Oh, you must tell me everything...!"

[justpastdawn]

Whenever Oz or Gilbert or Reim spoke of the Rainsworths, it was always with a respect so deep it was bordering on reverence. Or fear. That was always something Kevin found reassuring. It meant that it wasn't just that Kevin would attach himself to the first people who were kind to him, and it meant that when he stayed with them, no doubt he'd be doing so entirely of his own accord rather than any sort of blackmail. He's at his happiest when he has loved ones he can devote himself to whole-heartedly, and if the Rainsworth household had earned the way they were spoken of, he didn't doubt that they were going to earn him, too.

But for all that it made him wish foolishly that he might be able to meet one in spite of the risks, that didn't prepare him at all to have this woman spin on her own disappointment so quickly, accept this alternate version of him so readily, that he doesn't even have time to feel properly sad about it.

He gapes at her in mild shock as she looks him over, flusters a little when she coos over him like he was a little boy she once knew and now she's found him all grown up. Then he's getting dragged as unrepentantly as he drags his own closest friends, and Shelly will hear him huff out a helpless, disbelieving little laugh. Yeah. Yeah, he sees now. Thinking back on all the people he met in Empatheias when he was half-feral and bleeding, able to understand now just what he needed back then, he can see how this sparkling force of nature would manage to sink her claws into him so deeply. She'd have had a much more difficult time of it in Verens, given that Kevin would have been able to escape her from time to time. But given the way all his other relationships have turned out there is no doubt in his mind that she would have happily and successfully hunted him down.

What a lucky thing, then, that he's going to land almost right in her lap when the time comes.

He turns briefly over his shoulder to make a shooing motion at the counter, a reassurance that everything's fine. The crazed and sparkly ruffle swordsman does not require rescuing from the crazed and sparkly ruffle noblewoman. He manages to extricate himself just enough to pull a chair out for her when they reach a table, as much to take a moment to settle himself as to display his Proper Manners™. But when he sits down himself, his colors have seeped back into him, and he's glowing, ever so faintly. The light wisps up off of him like steam from a hot cup of tea, a watery flicker of silver in contrast to her gold. Nobody he's met from home has truly had an easy time accepting him as not being Xerxes Break. For Shelly Rainsworth, of all people -- the woman who practically made Xerxes Break -- to declare Kevin Regnard of Empatheias to simply be a friend she's only just now getting to meet humbles him in a strange and shaky way.

"...I'm sure I don't quite know where to begin."

[smallkindnesses]

Just

as

planned.

Blackmailed, never. That sort of thing was simply not Shelly's style. At least, not when there are better methods at her disposal, and absolutely never in any serious way between true friends. However, it would be a falsehood to say she had never manipulated him. It's simply that, like right now, she'd used her powers for good. (For instance, when one unexpectedly has a... house guest in need of healing, and one of the first coherent questions out of that guest's mouth had been a request for news of a young Miss Sinclair, one cannot help but conclude, after some reflection, that having an adorable, young Miss Rainsworth on hand can be a very useful thing for prying open a closed and broken heart.)

Aside from that, the thing about Shelly Rainsworth is that, in modern parlance, she is a ride or die bitch, in all the best ways. A friend she's only just now getting to meet is exactly what Kevin is. She knows him too well and has loved him too much for him to be anything else, and that is simply that. Oh, it's true that--in the wee small hours, and quiet, private moments--she will feel a stab of longing for her beloved, old Break. That's as unavoidable as missing her daughter, or her mother. He's best friend and family and we shan't say what else, all rolled into one, and she is away from him.

However, even if he's become a whole other person in his own right, Kevin's new-yet-familiar presence can't be anything but a welcome and unexpected comfort. He clearly hasn't been left all alone, here, and now she is not. (She hadn't been worried about this , mind you. A Rainsworth is never worried--openly. But something in her eases, just having him here, sitting across from her.)

She looks up at him with a warmly-teasing sparkle in her eyes, a tiny, conspirational smile tugging at her lips.

"Well..." she says, softly. "I already know the very beginning, or something close enough to it. So, tell me what changed things." Her smile brightens, becomes girlish, and it's as if she's sitting in her own personal sunbeam. Reaching across the table, she takes his left hand in hers, again, brushing a thumb delicately across the tiny rosebud adorning his finger. "And tell me all about this!"

Obviously she's not merely speaking about the ring so much as what it represents, but she would be enchanted by it, even if it were not adorning the finger of a dear friend! Roses have always been her favorite flowers, and the prospect of there being some magic here that allows them to be worn in such a way, and never fade, is a delightful sort of miracle!

(Given that he seems to have discovered a great many parts of "Xerxes Break" without ever really becoming him, she almost wonders if he'd stumbled upon someone at least a little bit like herself. The rose makes her suspect as much, and in an odd way it warms the cockles of her heart. How romantic, to think that the fates sometimes bring together the sort of people who will bring out the best in one another--even if not always the exact same people.)

[justpastdawn]

"Ah, well..."

It's a difficult question, in a way. The first one, rather; the source of the ring is someone he could easily prattle on about for hours, and he runs the thumb of his left hand along the underside of it in what has become his most recent comfort fidget. As to what changed...it's hard to say. The only person he's ever met in Verens who could tell him about those earliest days was Reim, and Reim was only thirteen at the time, and seeing things from rather a cranky perspective given the circumstances. There's a great deal that Kevin knows must have been different, going simply from what he knows of his own world. But there are still a great many gaps that he's only ever going to be able to fill by going home, and living it.

"...I was with the first group of Otherworlders to arrive, back then," he says, figuring the beginning is as good a place to start as any. "At that time, there was no one else here from -- our world, so -- no one could tell me...how this and that had turned out. Nightmares and the like caused things to break around me and one of the first things I did was bring the roof of a shed I was sleeping in down on my own head. Because of that, it wasn't safe to be inside much...so, I slept rough. It suited me very well, back then. I was used to it anyway, and -- ah. I could go wherever I liked in the city, you know? I would -- run around along the rooftops to avoid crowds, and I kept little caches here and there, hidden stores of tea and things. Like a squirrel."

It's rather a rough start to a story, but Kevin doesn't sound at all embarrassed or regretful of any of it. It's just how things were, and he means it when he says the lifestyle suited him at the time. More importantly, it's the first thing he can think of that he absolutely knows was not at all like it will be when he goes back home, not at all like it was for this woman's version of him. When a legendary mass murder shows up on your doorstep -- and they'd have known exactly who he was, they'd have had to have him tended to by a doctor and anyone working for Pandora would have known exactly what the mark on his chest means -- you either kill him or you keep him close. Kevin is certain he would have been under house arrest, certain it was the Rainsworths who bothered to make up some sort of alternate explanation for his presence. Here, in Verens, he had freedom. He went where he pleased when he pleased, without the threat of a trial and execution hanging over his head the instant someone breathed his surname. No one cares at all about red eyes in Empatheias.

[smallkindnesses]

Some of her glow diminishes, upon hearing that he'd been all alone. While it's true he's become a whole other person on his own, in this place--the best method she can think of to reconcile it is to think of him as her Break's identical twin--knowing just what state he must have been in, when he arrived, sends a thread of deep concern through her.

"But what about your wound? Was there no one to see to it for you? Had you no friends?"

When he had arrived at Rainsworth, Shelly's mother had been away on Pandora business, which had left Shelly herself to oversee the situation. She had summoned two of her most trusted servants and had him moved into a guest bedroom. Then, she'd sent one to ride for the family doctor, and kept one with her to help bandage the gaping hole where his eye had been, and change him into a spare pair of her late husband's pyjamas. The sight of the mark upon his chest had only confirmed something she'd already suspected. However, even if he was an Illegal Contractor who had somehow survived past the end of his Contract, even if he may have been the infamous Red Eyed Ghost she'd heard Duke Barma speak of, even if he had information no other human being alive had about the Abyss, he was first and foremost, a wounded human being. Decisions about what to do with him, regarding Pandora, would have to wait until he was well, and by the time that bridge needed crossing, she'd already decided to keep him.

She offers a soft smile, though, at his caches of food.

"You stowed away food around the estate, too, at first. Since you were a guest, it wouldn't have done to make you eat with the servants, and you didn't like to sit at the table with the family. So, after a month of it, I started finding where you were and having my meals there. Since I was a lady of rank, you couldn't precisely tell me to go away, and we needed to get you accustomed to being around people again, some way."

[justpastdawn]

Very suddenly, Kevin is making a familiar face indeed. It's the face that Xerxes Break always used to make when he was trying not to make a face.

"...despite my best efforts, I did find myself frequently in the company of certain individuals who could not be persuaded that I was not at all in the mood for interaction, yes," he drawls after a moment. He is not going to call them "friends" in this moment because if he did it would mean they have won, but at the very least, no. Kevin did not consider himself alone, at that time. "My wound was...well, I had the good fortune to fall on a little red witch upon my arrival. She was able to heal it over with her magic, and later, conjured up my blade for me. I haven't seen her since. Given a circumstance like that, the whole thing is rather like a fairy tale, honestly."

But he's logging the similarities away even as he says it. It's not a surprise at all that his food cache habit holds true in both realms -- going homeless is traumatizing in very specific ways, and although he's been settled for several years now, it's not entirely out of laziness that Kevin has cookie tins and candy bowls scattered in various obvious places around his house. That he hid when he could checks out; that he was too aware of his manners to be overtly rude to a noblewoman who held his life in her hands despite his pains does too. The process of coming in out of the cold was a long and slow one, and it's food for thought to start to get a glimpse of how much of his recovery was due to persistent people who just wouldn't let him be, even if they were gentle about it. Mostly.

[smallkindnesses]

Oh, she knows that face, and she knows just what it means. She can't resist laughing, especially after his evasive answer. Too late, Kevin--they win whether you admit it or not. It's clear in the fact that he's sitting here, all covered in purple instead of black. It's clear in the merry way he'd popped right into the middle of the room, nattering delightedly about apples, instead of being off in some corner hissing at anyone who got too close. Here as in her world, he had been loved despite his best efforts, and this fills her with such joy that the customers around her will find their tea suddenly sweeter than it had been, a moment before.

She locks eyes with him, the sort of knowing, loving and triumphant gaze all mothers seem to be equipped with, that says you don't fool me a BIT, young man!

"So," she says, raising a rosegold eyebrows, "you had friends."

She'll take no shit from you, Mr. Regnard! You'd better get used to it.

"Tell me all about them. Tell me about your favorite ones!"

This, more than anything, is what she'd meant about what had changed things. What and who had lifted him up from the man he'd arrived here as--a man she remembered all too well-- and made him into the man he is? The man she doesn't quite know. You can tell a great deal about people from the friends they keep, even if they like to pretend the don't have any.

[justpastdawn]

"Feh."

Shelly doesn't have to take the shit but Kevin's gonna give her shit anyway. When she meets Shiro, she will understand Kevin's immediate knee-jerk reaction in this regard. Kevin loves him dearly but he is disgusting.

...but he does tell her. He starts off with Lady Kaihime, an eighteen-year-old general who wielded a fantastic sword that would unhinge itself and go flailing about like a whip. When they sparred she uprooted a whole tree with it and of course it's no surprise that this one would manage to win his favor...despite the fact that she was incredibly noisy, and may or may not have once tracked him down by asking directions from a bear, he's still not clear on that actually. And, she was the first person in Verens who managed to make him laugh -- by way of barging onto the amulet network to recite to all and sundry a poem she had written, about how love was like rotting food. She hated to be so unladylike and yet never seemed able to stop herself and honestly it was high entertainment.

There was Miss Sanae, a literal and proper goddess, who made him a miraculous never-ending milkshake once after he won her spicy food challenge. He still has some of that milkshake with breakfast most days. Although she was very dear to him, he says, they quarreled often in those early days, neither one understanding the other very well. Mm, but -- it was Miss Sanae who said to him once that even if he couldn't have any hope for himself, that didn't mean he couldn't inspire it in others, during a time when everyone was in danger and he was certain he would fall. Knowing what this world is like, he's lived by those words since, something Shelly will see immediately in the way everyone else speaks about Kevin. He's a menace, to be sure, but he's always spoiling all of his loved ones, always insistently throwing parties during times of trouble. Sometimes he even makes a speech, he's that far gone into his self-imposed position as a fussy positivity generator. That's the fault of a lot of people, really, but Sanae was the first person who ever spoke to him as though she believed he could really be what he's become. A few glimmers of silvery light wisp up from him when he talks about her, the love he wasn't at all equipped to handle, and who couldn't have handled him.

Miss Edea was one of Kevin's Rainsworths here in Verens. He doesn't say as much explicitly because he has no idea that's the case, but it will be evident to Shelly almost immediately. She was and still is his favorite boss, he says, just as much of a cake and sweets fiend as he is and insistently unrepentant about her snarky sense of humor and her passionate interest in other people's love affairs. But also -- ruthless in the way she valued every member of her team. Kevin had joined the Enforcers thinking he'd be little more than a hired sword, punching where he was pointed. Actually, he was scolded by his other boss almost immediately for deciding an order he was given was stupid and thus ignoring it. But Edea made it a point to actively chase him down and wheedle his thoughts out of him at the end of every meeting. It was she who gave him the confidence to speak up when he feels a need, and the fact that he's a captain himself in the force now is something he attributes directly to her encouragement and trust. Princess Celestia was another Rainsworth, calm and serene in the face of every single quibble he threw at her, always welcoming him when he popped into her magic shop for a visit and always willing to let him take shelter under a wing if he was feeling poorly.

Celestia was a magic talking pony with a unicorn horn and great big wings, you see. In her own world, it was her job to make the sun come up.

Of course there are scads more; he's had five years to stick his nose in other people's business, after all. Bulat, his husband, who came up out of the canal steaming angrily one winter's day. Kevin immediately called him over so he could heat up his lunch on him. Shiro, his official best friend, who travels with his companions in great ships that fly through space. Keith, his beloved apprentice, who reminded Kevin so much of himself when he first met him -- a scruffy, angry young thing and a prodigy with a sword, who Kevin loved like a brother while he was here. Over the course of three years, Kevin watched him grow up into a beautiful brat of a swordsman and a leader so sturdy that Kevin sometimes obeyed his casual day to day orders entirely on instinct, and his colors flicker terribly when he speaks of how he's off having grand adventures in his own world now that they've won that stupid war. The loss of Keith in particular is still something raw and painful for him and he has yet to find anything to fill that shitty brother-shaped hole. Oh, but there are others still. Gabriel, his recently acquired father, working back in the kitchen now with his extra shadow limbs. Eleanor, who mothers the lot of them, but especially Hibiki; Kevin is eternally grateful for this. Kylo Ren, who we hate because he will not let Kevin play with his light saber, among other things.

They will need a whole pot of tea to get through this conversation. And, when the time finally comes to head home, probably they will need to be pried from the table.