pt_memes | Test Drive

Test Drive - Pre-Game

Welcome to the first Test Drive Meme for Phantom Thieves International! Use this post to try out your characters. If you have at least 10 comments in threads with at least two different characters (a thread being 4 or more comments from you), this can be used as the RP Sample for your Application.

Testrun Prompts

Something growing teenagers and college students often share is a love of large portions of greasy food delivered quickly and for a bargain price. For teenagers, their limited spending power and large appetites makes this an ideal combination, whereas college students often don’t have the money to eat well, or even regularly, so the occasional large meal is a rare but valued treat. To that end, a local diner has come up with a rather ingenious scheme - the Omegaburger, a $25 two-pound burger with a generous helping of fries and an extra large soft drink. If you can finish the burger in 10 minutes, your meal is free.

It’s definitely a gamble, so it hasn’t had too many takers, and whenever anyone tries it’s always announced with a great deal of fanfare and curious onlookers. Are you one of these onlookers? Are you a poor fool who has taken up the challenge? Did you just succeed (or fail) and now need to be extremely sick? Are you the unfortunate friend of an idiot who took on the challenge and has now decided to be very sick on your shoulder?

II.

Delving into a Palace can be a strange and terrifying experience. Today, you and your fellow Phantom Thieves find themselves in a distorted circus funhouse, full of mirrors and illusions that make it impossible to discern where you are. All around you, distorted reflections abound and clown-masked Shadows lurk behind every corner, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting thieves.

How is your team handling this? Are you afraid? Emboldened? Does someone on your team have a sick sense of humor and is actually enjoying themselves? Or are you too busy getting attacked to develop much of an opinion besides “need to stab these things now”?

III.

Rush-hour in LA can charitably described as a violation of human rights, but it’s usually not THIS bad. Perhaps the source is that giant police blockade that has cordoned off several streets in downtown LA for an undetermined reason. Motorists are forced to go around and pedestrians who stray to close to the blockage may be met with questions. The police themselves are a grim lot, heavily armed and looking much more the part of an army than a civilian police force. Pedestrians who stray too close seem to be subject to pointed questions or rebuff from the assembled officers.

Got somewhere to be? Not gonna happen. Look suspicious? You might have an officer scrutinizing you with care. Getting belligerent? That’s really not a good idea right now. But that’s OK, right? It’s not like you have anything to hide.

IV.

You’ve managed to score an invite to a pretty swinging block party. Rumor has it that some Hollywood casting folks will be present as well. If you’re in LA to make it big in Hollywood (and let’s face it, who isn’t in this town?) then you have to be there. As for the party itself, well, the alcohol is plentiful, the ID checks are cursory, the music is… high in volume if nothing else, and the people are pleasantly fake and often overdressed.

What are you doing here, anyway? Looking to score a big break? Dragged here by some friends? Want some free booze? Are underage and want some free booze? Are actually part of the industry and trying to avoid having to deal with all these posers so you can have a damn beer in peace?

The holiday season has come to a close, which means it’s back to the grind. Whether you’re in school or working, it means getting up at an ungodly hour, dragging yourself out of bed, and being a productive member of society. For students, that means returning from a long holiday and trying to pretend you didn’t forget everything you learned in the last semester. For office workers, well, that means you have no holidays to look forward to for about five months.

How are you doing? Hung over? Tired? Resentful that you have to work again? Just glad to be out of the house and doing something productive? How about your friends and/or coworkers? Glad to see them? Already want to punch them after five minutes?

VI.

Wildcard! Feel free to make your own prompt.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[ V. THE DOLDRUMS

Maya is a woman that hates the end of holidays, and her roommate, or one of them, anyway, Ulala, is a woman that insisted she buy a gym membership. She's dragging herself out of bed and to work, but it's slow-going. She pulls on whatever's clean (screw laundry, she'll do it later), gets ready, and then heads out the door... only to bump into someone because she's half asleep. Sorry! ]

Oh, no... s-sorry! I wasn't--I didn't... god, Mondays, right? I'm sorry!

[ II. PALACE

She is here, but she has no idea how to feel about this. It's her first time in a Palace, and to be honest, it's both terrifying and exhilarating. She wields her two pink pistols in each hand (replicas, but they work well enough) with gusto, at least... although her first shots don't hit anything but mirrors. ]

W-whoops! I'll get it next time!

[ Bang. Bang. Two more mirrors. Okay, really, she should try to pinpoint the actual Shadows in here, but she's just... actually, to be honest, she might just be a terrible shot. Maybe someone ought to direct her? ]

D-do you think I should try something else? ... Wait, no, I'm sure I can get it! "Think positively!"

[ WILDCARD.

She was coming to local college and school campuses to report on, of all things, the state of their education. If she doesn't look too pleased about being here with her equipment as she gets it out of her van, it's because, well, Maya's not. In particular, though, she'd at least tried to find a campus that had something interesting to offer. An urban legend, an old ghost story... really, anything to be useful and bring some kind of truth to the world.

She's muttering as she's unloading her equipment. ]

This isn't the kind of "hard-hitting" story I had in mind... when I told my boss I wanted to go reporting on the places that needed it most, this wasn't what I meant... sure, schools can BE bad, but they're not the only problem...

[ A sigh a she hefts her camera bag out and onto her shoulder. Time to go find a scoop. If you're a college student or a high schooler, you miiiight find her coming up to you for an interview. ]

Ciao, I'm Maya, with the L.A. Times! Can you tell me about that rumor going around the school?

IV

[Ky was against the wall, watching the crowd. The police presence was basically a courtesy to make the party goers feel comfortable, but it doesn't mean they're slacking. For the most part, he was randomly stopping anyone that looked too young for ID checks, and checking for signs of drug deals or usage when he approaches another person who seem a bit too young to be at these kind of parties]

Excuse me, may I have a moment?

V

Ugh...

[Unlike the students, he sure didn't have any time off during the holidays, and instead was part of a bust of a meth lab on the 24th - Merry fucking Christmas to him. Today was actually his first day off, when everyone else was getting back to their regular schedules. He was sipping away at a thermos full of tea as he tries to get some grocery shopping done, picking at the holiday goods marked at discount. Even the tea wasn't enough, as he starts to drift off, leaning against his cart - which slips away from him, and lacking the support, he suddenly faceplants]

Ooow!

III. Blockade

Just a little distance from the blockade, there's a pale young woman looking miserable and staring at the assembled police officers with something like fear in her eyes. Every so often she plucks up her courage, wanders closer, and immediately chickens out. It's super noticeable and the cops are starting to eye her suspiciously.

"Oh no...I'm going to be late..."

II. Palace

Cape billowing behind her, Terra (her name is Trance right now, she keeps slipping on that) tears her flame-patterned mask off, summoning her Persona and vaporizing a Shadow with an incandescent lance of flame.

"Who's laughing now, asshole?!" she snarls as the heat of her attack causes cracks to craze over the surface of the nearest mirrors. Gesturing with her sabre, she smashes another one of the clown-like Shadows into the ground with a strike from her Persona.

Stalking over to the downed Shadow, she raises her sword overhead and starts stabbing the clown-like thing over and over, her face twisted into a furious scowl beneath her mask.

It's rapidly becoming clear the 'problem' she mentioned she had with clowns wasn't simply being afraid of them. Someone should probably get her to stop using up all her stamina on the mooks.

"Woah!"

Sinbad (or Drake) whirled as he bounces off a rapidly disappearing clown, using the push to strike another shadow before sliding to a halt behind her. "Trance!" he calls out to her. "Trance! It's dead, it can't hurt anyone." He calls out first, his dragon-like mask hiding his worried face.

Then he reaches to catch her wrist to try to get her to stop.

There's a brief instant of movement as Trance reacts - someone is reaching for her wrist - middle of a battle - ATTACK - and then she recognizes Drake's mask. The hulking form of her Persona stops dead, clenched fist barely a foot from Drake's face before vanishing as Trance puts her mask back on, eyes wide and startled.

"I...I..."

As the words don't come out, her face starts to become paler before she whirls around and runs off.

Much as he'd probably would deny it later, he did flinch as the massive persona came close. He starts to let go - grabbing her was in hindsight impulsive and really dumb in the situation.

Then she bolted, his eyes widening in shock before the reality kicks in, and he starts to run after her, cursing as he slams into a reflective surface, before pushing himself off to keep going, realizing they're starting to run into a hall of mirrors. "Trance, wait!"

II

"What I want to know is, who are all these people who actually like clowns? Like, how are they still a thing? I hate them," Enokizu announced decisively to no one in particular. "I hate them more than..." He paused to review the exhaustsive mental list of things he hated. "I hate them more than creepy crawly things, and stale cake, and public transportation, and telemarketers, and when your favorite TV show gets unexpectedly cancelled even though the Blu-ray sales were strong." Eno gave a firm nod, sure that he'd managed to thoroughly articulate his position on clowns. People were always telling him that he didn't make sense and that he needed to explain himself, so he'd taken their advice to heart.

While the prospect of fighting monsters in an alternate dimension appealed to Enokizu, he knew that it was unwise to rush into battle without being fully prepared. So, he stopped for a moment to squint at his reflection in the rippled surface of a fun house mirror. Apart from the way the mirror stretched his body into something resembling a wet noodle, he looked good. Exactly how a phantom thief should look... unlike some of his fellow thieves who looked like rejects from a cosplay convention. Enokizu tossed his scarf over his shoulder, idly wondering if his outfit could be improved by a cape or whether that would just be overkill. Probably overkill. He adjusted his cap at a rakish angle, satisfied that he was now looking awesome and ready for action.

"What were we talking about? Clowns, right? Yes. Let's punch some clowns."

III

Enokizu had never liked the police - not since his first run-in with an LAPD highway cop who'd fined him for driving without a license, even though it was really the DMV's fault that he didn't have a driver's license in the first place. So what if he'd failed the vision test? He was an excellent driver! He'd never hit anything that was alive, and that was really all that counted, right? It was just more proof that they were living in a fascist police state.

Now the fascist police state had caused a massive traffic jam with their blockade, and there seemed to be little hope of Enokizu's bus ever arriving. He'd decided to walk, only to run into even more yellow tape and traffic cones. It was difficult to tell whether the heavily armed officers were trying to keep people out or keep something in. Whatever the reason, the police response seemed wildly excessive... and they weren't even attempting to deal with the traffic or with the increasingly restive crowd.

"Hey! What's going on in there!?" He pushed his way through the crowd, approaching the cordon. "You can't just leave people stranded out here!"

There's a slight stutter in the sound of footsteps as Drake calls out, as if Trance stumbled at hearing her name being called.

Why would you do that? It doesn't make sense, she almost hurt you, you shouldn't sound like that, people don't sound concerned when they are yelling at her.

When he heard the stutter in the footfalls, he pushes himself harder to close the distance, while trying not to crash into any more mirrors - because it hurts, and it'd look stupid if he did that again.

"Trance..." no, don't say calm down, that's stupid, it didn't work on him, why would it work on her? He realized as he tries to think of what can get her to stop. "Trance - wait! We got no idea where we're going!"

That's - but - Trance's brain just stops working at that. Why is he talking like he's going to keep following her. That's not how this is supposed to work.

When Drake catches up, Trance is just sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest. She looks up at him with wide, uncertain eyes, her mask doing nothing to hide her lost expression.

The teenager pants slightly as he finally caught up to her. He scans their surroundings and saw for the moment only their distorted reflections, and once Drake was assured they weren't going to be ambushed, he slides onto the floor, sitting cross-legged, as he closed his eyes for a moment.

"I'm not gonna ask if you're alright, because it's clear that you're not." He stated as gently as he could. "But, if you need space once we're out, I'll give it - but until we find an exit, I'm going to help you, okay?" He puts a fist into the palm of his hand as he nods. "If you want to talk about it, I'll listen, if you don't - I won't bug you about it."

Trance shakes her head.

"I...don't understand. Why...are you doing this?"

He shrugs. "It seems like the nice thing to do?" Sinbad answers. "Besides, I can't let a girl in trouble be, I gotta at least try to help."

Trance is honestly baffled by this response.

"You should be angry with me."

There's a certain bewilderment in her voice as she says this, because she honestly does not understand why he isn't.

( SOMEWHAT IMPORTANT CONTEXT: this relm is a crow. )

"I like this new you, Trance!"

'Stain', for her part, fails to see any problem with this. She's too young, too inexperienced with humanity, and too selfishly focused on getting what she wants (the shiny treasure, she wants to have the shiny treasure) to see any issue with one of her teammates suddenly becoming significantly more effective.

"Very strong! Very angry! Very good at smashing things! Really good! Awfully good! See, I was right about throwing you in at the deep end! Heh, and you thought you'd have trouble."

She nods in approval, watching as Terra stabs the clownlike monster over and over and over again. And over. And over... It's greed, rather than concern (or at least concern that is very, very well disguised as greed), that eventually moves her.

"But hey, idea. Let's maybe save some of that for later. I bet I can find you an even better clown to beat up if we keep going. Maybe one with big ol' deep pockets full of shiny things."

Edited 2017-12-06 01:05 (UTC)

He cocks his head like a confused puppy. "Why? I mean, you almost hit me, but I did startle you." he pointed out. "And you didn't actually hit me, so yeah the both of us got scared, but no one got hurt, right?"

Trance, for her part, is starting to get a cramp in her stabbing arm, so she'll just finish off the Shadow with one last thrust between the legs before moving on.

It's not entirely clear if she actually heard Stain or not, but she's sheathing her sabre, at least.

Trance tilts her own head to the side.

"You are...very confusing."

With that, she stands up.

"We should...go back."

"I get that a lot." With that, he pulls himself up to his feet. "Yeah, saw a movie with a maze of mirrors like this, didn't end well for the lady running in it." Sinbad added casually as he turns around.

"Let's see... left hand rule should get us back where we were easily." Drake smiles as he spoke with almost a chirp, trying to cheer her up.

"Nice and dead. Not breathing at all! Very, very good. We'll make a master thief out of you yet, Trance!"

Normally she'd flap down to take a perch on Trance's shoulder or arm. But- well, maybe not right now. Stain's selfish, not foolish. But if the lack of a response bothers her, she's not really indicating it at all.

"Hmm- let's take your new attitude for a test drive. I feel a really big one over to the left. Probably has one of those squeaky noses and everything."

There's a clicking sound as Trance takes out her carbine and switches it over to full automatic. She pauses, just for a second, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. When she opens them, they are filled with terrible purpose.

"Stain. Show me to the killing ground."

Trance trails along behind him, blinking a little.

"You were allowed to watch movies?"

"Yea..." he trails off as he looks bad at her. "You're not allowed to?" Sinbad echoes the question with a mix of incredulity and slight horror

"No. 'Movies are a mindless indulgence of the frivolous masses, and have no place in a well-ordered world.'"

She is definitely quoting someone there.

He pulls a face, lips pursing into a display of dismay. "That sounds like a boring world." Drake blurted out.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 5

Test Drive - Pre-Game

Maya Amano | Persona 2: Innocent Sin

Ky Kiske | Guilty Gear

Terra Branford | Final Fantasy Six

II

no subject

no subject

Reijirou Enokizu | Hyakkiyakou

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

II

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject