Test Drive #7!

[powersthatbe]

Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cuts there are three new prompts, and here are the prompts from previous test-drives, which you’re still welcome to use in this post. When you comment, be sure you specify what prompt you want to play with, and please put up your own threadstarter - it makes for a much more friendly environment that a forest of bare toplevels! OCs are especially welcome!

Our upcoming app round runs February 1st-7th, after which we’ll have our Shoujo/Otome Plot, Doki Doki no Gakuen, ins which high school rivalry blossoms into friendship and romance, and competitive students work to fill one another's moe-meters, sabotage hammerspace resources, and sparkle with determination.

Prompt #23 is a darker moment of surrealism - the Liminal Space Travelers inhabit between Jaunts sometimes draws in the characters' dreams - or in this case, their nightmares, colliding, competing, drawing people in.

Prompt #24 is a flashback to the Ivory Tower jaunt, our last stay at a school - an idealistic postapocalyptic academy where students, being students, cared as much for the fate of the coffee shop as for the world. When the coffee shop's funding is threatened, the students solicited donations during Open Mic Night...

Prompt #25 is a glimpse of a jaunt in the far past or future, a virtual world where intelligent algorithms lead lives just like people, and out on the edge of the mainframe, an ambitious group pursues semi-legal hobbies... even a computer world has squatters and bohemians, although those within the firewalls may think of them as viruses or junk data.


Prompt #23: Nightmare Dreamscape
Liminal Space suddenly fills with the sound of whispers, secretive voices that grow louder and louder until they almost sound like deafening static. Everything tilts sideways for a moment, and Travelers will experience a nauseating rush of sensations to their minds, like being blown around in a hurricane, or being sucked up into a tornado. This sensation disappears almost as quickly as it comes, and the whispers that had become so prevalent suddenly grow silent as the scenery changes. At first, each Traveler will find themselves alone, in a scene of their mind's own making. And it is not a pretty sight for anyone.

Veterans will recognize what this is - a dreamscape - and they will remember that it is very jeopardizing place to be, both emotionally and physically, as these places come directly from their own minds and the minds of their fellow Travelers. For those ill prepared, it can be traumatizing, physically harmful, perhaps even deadly. And ill prepared many will be, for these dreamscapes are nightmares, pure and simple. Even the most pleasant of dreams might appear as a twisted, blackened version of itself, and each Travelers' worst nightmares are bound to make an appearance. The dreamscapes have been notorious for shorting out the Telepathic Network that connects all Investigators, making it doubly hard to call for help. Even more dangerous are when two of these dreamscapes intersect, causing a terrifying hybrid that will likely be even more nightmarish than before... but helping other Travelers with their own nightmares may very well provide an ally to deal with yours.



Prompt #24: Ivory Tower
La Tour Ivoire Academe is a beautiful university with an equally stunning and lush campus, gleaming white against the stark gray of the post-apocalyptic wasteland outside. But neither the students nor the Travelers need worry about the radiation seeping through and harming them; the quarter-mile wide, four-story high walls filter out any of the harmful radiation from outside. With no windows in the lead-lined walls, it is hard to tell when night has come, other than the radiant light levels decreasing as the sun goes down behind hazy, toxic clouds. But evening brings about an event that everyone knows about from the brightly-colored fliers that have littered every vertical surface on campus - Open Mic Night at the Ground, the Ivory Tower's very own coffee shop, and for many its pride and joy. This is the chance for anyone to speak their mind or to sing badly at karaoke, and more than a few flasks of various alcohols will be slipped around to students and poured in coffees, while largely ignored by the teachers. Even if the thought of getting on stage is frightening, it's always possible to find a nice, quiet corner and watch the proceedings, perhaps quietly talking with some pleasant company in between acts.

Alternatively, for those who don't wish to participate or even watch, there are a few night classes being held for students in all three departments: Cultures and Humanities, Technology and Salvage, and Ecological Sciences. They are considered optional, but could very well gain some extra credit for those students lagging behind after midterms, or provide fascinating insight for Investigators that aren't familiar with this modern-day world, and wish to learn more.



Prompt #25: The Digital Frontier
The black glass plain beneath them matches the depthless black sky, but there are lights - white and orange and blue, tracing lines and shapes, the geometry of a city skyline in the distance. Here, unshielded conduits beam data and energy in streams of smooth white lightning through shallow grooves in the glass, and Travelers and programs take turns skipping across them, or using copper rods to divert them into other channels, sifting the data with pans for valuable bits and bites, or pouring it into molds to shape it.

On the digital frontier, there’s not much else to do - except practice for the Games. The Games can be a program’s big shot. Disc-dueling isn’t fatal, here, but solid impacts do cause momentary glitching when a throw lands rather than being deflected. And there are a few light-cycles racing in the night, but they’re old models, only able to turn at a ninety-degree angle, their solid-light wake having a length of only about a hundred feet before it derezzes.

Comments

[seestheworld]

Sounds like Tartarus... although hopefully with fewer battles to the death involved. "Really? How come?"

[stophamatime]

"I'm not sure, exactly. Everyone says it's kind of...the spot where a lot of different worlds overlap, so maybe we just keep getting parts of different ones?"

He probably should've gotten a little more from everyone about how and why Liminal Space works like it does, really, but he'd had a lot on his mind when he arrived.

[seestheworld]

"...Huh." Interesting. Weird, but interesting. "So what are we doing here?" What are you doing in a place like this is what she actually means, but she refrains from phrasing it that way. Ken never did like being treated like a child.

[stophamatime]

He doesn't even realize he's being indulged, but that makes it that much easier to answer her as if this is completely normal, and as if she weren't apparently someone he's supposed to know but doesn't, and as if that isn't weirding him out a little bit.

"We wind up here...in between going to other worlds. There's always something we're supposed to do in those, but it always changes. Nobody seems to know that much about who keeps sending us around, though, except they've got something to do with the tarot."

Which he could almost blame on being somehow, weirdly tied in to everything else, if there weren't so few Persona-users actually here.

Wild Duck's entrance is only a short way left, by now, and he stops, his hand going to his Evoker as he eyes the door suspiciously. Probably better not to bust through too recklessly, with how everything else looks...

[seestheworld]

"The tarot, huh...?" She's never going to get away from the tarot, is she?

Of course, complaining about it won't help, so she doesn't. Instead, she reaches for her own Evoker. After all, anything could be in there.

[stophamatime]

Well, that much isn't surprising. She's from SEES, however that works, so of course she'd have one.

But not knowing what she's capable of, he's not sure who should go first, so he asks - "...should I cover you, or you cover me?"

[seestheworld]

"Cover me," she replies automatically. It's not meant as a slight. She knows Ken is capable, but she is - was - their leader, and old habits die hard. Just like she does, apparently.

[stophamatime]

He's got enough sense not to take it as a slight, thankfully; he may not be quite as good a healer as Yukari, but he's still ahead of most of SEES, so taking support isn't unusual, even if it's not always what he does, either.

He lifts his Evoker not quite all the way to his head, but close enough that he's not going to need long to react, once she starts forward, and waits.

[seestheworld]

She'd been a little upset to see so much of the roof missing along with part of the far wall, but that was before she'd spotted the nest of shadows behind the counter. At least this way her Persona will have some headroom. It takes her less than an instant to raise the Evoker to her head and fire. "Thanatos!"

And then there aren't any shadows anymore. At least, not in any recognizable form.

(She's honestly a little surprised she even has Thanatos under the circumstances. But then, you can't really kill Death, can you?)

[stophamatime]

Ken wasn't there the night Minato threw every rule of Persona-summoning the rest of them know out the window, but he's heard the story from everyone else. He's heard the description, he knows the name -

So seeing Minako call for that Persona is...surprising, to put it gently.

(But it does start some wheels turning in his head about what must be happening, and why he doesn't know her. He hasn't exactly talked to Souji or Yua much, but didn't Naoto mention...?)

He stays back for a few long seconds, before taking a few steps forward - still behind her, still far back enough not to be in the line of fire if there's anything else there. "...is it clear?"

[seestheworld]

"Yep."

[stophamatime]

He follows her in, but it's not until he's caught up and taken a look around that he finally lowers his own Evoker.

[seestheworld]

She still hasn't put hers away, either; there's always the chance of something trying to come in from outside, something that missing wall will make easier.

[stophamatime]

Of course, now that they're ostensibly safe enough to start talking, he has no idea how to start.

"Um..."

[seestheworld]

That about sums it up.

Someone's clearly got to get this conversation started. Unfortunately, 'So, how've you been?' really isn't an appropriate conversation starter. (Nor is 'You're not dead, are you?' which was her second choice.) Instead, she settles on:

"So how long have you been here?"

[stophamatime]

"It's been...about a month. Maybe a little more?" He frowns. "It's kind of weird to keep track...it was October and then suddenly I wound up somewhere it was June, and I wasn't really counting."

[seestheworld]

October. Oh, no.

"...When in October?"

[stophamatime]

Ah.

There's no way she doesn't know, with the look on her face, and he's not sure if that makes this better or worse. It means he'll never have to explain it, at least.

But he'd kept his head down the entire way back to the dorms, and as soon as he was sure nobody was paying attention, he'd gone straight for the window and gotten out of there. He didn't want to face any of them. He didn't want to know what they must think of him, after all of that.

He still doesn't want to know, and the fact that he doesn't know her at all - doesn't have an inkling of what he should expect - only makes it worse.

"...October 5th."

His gaze is planted firmly on the ground, potential interruptions be damned.

[seestheworld]

Oh, Ken.

She remembers those days all too clearly - Ken and Shinjiro missing the mission, Shinjiro's shooting, Ken's subsequent re-disappearance... and his resolution and return. Which had happened on October 6th. "So you're not there yet."

...And she probably shouldn't have said that out loud.

[stophamatime]

...probably not, because that does get him to look up in confusion.

"I'm...?"

[seestheworld]

Well, nothing to be done for it now.

"...Sorry. I'm from a bit further ahead than you are, I think." Well, no - she knows she is. But she's not sure how much she should actually tell him.

[stophamatime]

There are suddenly an awful lot of things he wants to ask. About how things turned out, about whether they stopped the Dark Hour...but even if he does want to know that, he can't lie to himself that it's the first thing he wants to know, because mostly, he wants to ask what they did about him, after Shinjiro died.

...or maybe he doesn't want to ask.

"How long?"

That's an easier question.

[seestheworld]

...Not really an easier question. Not when the last thing she remembers is dying. But that's the only real concrete date she has, so...

"March."

[stophamatime]

"March?"

March feels like absolutely forever away.

"So...we must've beaten all of them, right?" They were so close already in October, so if they're still okay in March...!

(If only he knew.)

[seestheworld]

"We did." And then it had more or less exploded in their faces, but she's not sure she should tell him that. Not now, anyway.

Besides, he wouldn't even know who Ryoji was, much less who he'd turned out to actually be. Which is... a very strange thought.