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interstellar4042015-12-28 09:08 pm
interdimanagers) wrote in interstellar4042015-12-28 09:08 pm
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☆MUSICIAN TEST DRIVE: ONCE MORE WITH FEELING
☆WELCOME MUSICIANS
And welcome to our third TDM! We've got two types of prompts to use this time around: the first takes place while your character is in the process of being captured, and the second is during their first brainwashed rockstar networking gig. The former is designed to be considered 100% game canon if you make it in officially, while the later is more speculative and will only work if you get lucky during label and band selection.☆THE TALENT SEARCHThese prompts are design to be kept as game canon after acceptance, and can be used as the official story of how your character was captured. Importantly, the kidnappers entering your timeline causes massive time distortions, which means that the outcome of this scenario will stagger and replay itself multiple times before settling on an outcome. This means that after the fact, you character may remember being captured multiple ways, or going in more than one direction, before the timeline settled on a final path. Or at least, they'll remember this until their memories are wiped shortly afterwards, but that's okay! That's what memory regains are for. Read this page for more specifics on this situation. Any powers the characters have will be weakened and prone to malfunction to the point of uselessness.
►A1) THE SEARCH: It always starts out this way, doesn't it? At some point in your life, you were just doing your thing, wherever you call home. Then, all at once, it's like you've been torn from your dimension by the roots. Time and space displace, and it's like you've been shifted one layer of reality to the left - like some kind of subspace where you can see your reality through it, like a rainbow surrealist image of your home. Even if you can see this ghost image of where you were, you can't interact with it meaningfully. Any friends or family are somewhere else. As you begin to wander, without any other options, you'll find that the scenery gradually shifts to ghost images of other places, other worlds. If you wander long enough, you'll even find other people, lost just like you are. But you probably won't have much time - you've been brought here for a reason, after all.
►A2) THE HUNT: It could happen almost immediately, or it could happen hours later - but, at some point, your dimensional kidnappers start to do their sweep. Space Men in black body suits and gas masks pursue you on foot and in small spaceships, trying to sweep you and the other displaced up like fish in a net. Their guns contain a weird pink gas that will knock out most with only a single breath - and for those more enduring, they have the heavy artillery, like electrical nets and guns. The fallen will be sealed up into stasis pods for transport and loaded onto the ships, which seem like the only way to get out of this place by choice. This is where it ends, but are you going to put up a fight?
NOTE: Characters already in game can't really tag into these sections, so try to tag around to other first time character tests if you can!☆WELCOME HOMEBy default, these prompts aren't considered canon, but if after you are accepted and sorted they can be tweaked into working for you, it'll be totally okay to keep them as a part of your rockstar's personal history. This occurrence is something that will be happening in early January game time, but of course, what remains canon and what doesn't will be subject to who is accepted and where they are placed. This takes place after being kidnapped and brainwashed, as your character is first joining their new label. As usual, this is celebrated with a party.
►B1) PLAY IT STRAIGHT: This is perhaps your second or third "New Years" party, and several days after the fact - just the industry's standard for starting the New Year with a bang and giving a change to mingle with all your exciting new business connections. Something typical to the high music society of Vista City - but maybe it's not yet typical to you. For a number of the freshly signed on newbies, this is their first real taste of what their new label has to offer - either Virgo or Pride - and the sheer glamour of it may be intoxicating. Industry big wigs scatter the floor, as do performers of all the tops labels and bands. Maybe you feel intimidated. Maybe you want to make your mark. Or maybe you're not quite as new as some, and are just trying to get through the evening. Either way, they is plenty of booze available if you need some liquid courage. Just how alcoholic is this egg nog? Probably very.
►B2) TOTALLY NORMAL: The signs of it are small, at first. Glasses you set down seeming out of place, stuff that almost looks like words written in the condensation on your glass. These little hauntings only get more and more persistent as the night continues, almost like some otherworldly presence is following you. You can feel them lurking nearby at times, like an unusual spot of cold or warmth in the air. None of the higher ups seem to notice but...to some of your new peers, this feels like old news. Eventually the signs become bolder, and at some point in the evening you'll hear it whispered in your ear or written on the bathroom mirror: "Remember."
►B3) REMEMBER: And you do. It strikes you suddenly, a feeling like a foreign presence straying through your mind. You remember something of your past, pertaining to the emotional affinity Love, Duty, Passion, or Hope - whichever feeling describes the person you used to be best. Except you know nothing of that life now, nothing except this single, strange thought in a room full strangers.
NOTE: Current characters definitely go to this party in earlier January, but it isn't required play. Besides the usual hauntings and meeting new characters, it is considered business as usual. Pride Records and Virgo Entertainment's employees are uneasily coexisting, pretty much because they have to in order to keep up appearances. Body guards are out in full force.☆HELPFUL INFO► Follow the mod plurk for updates:interstellar5555
► Check out the game NAVIGATION
► Check out the RESCUER TDM
► For more deets about Americana's holiday traditions check out THIS POST
► Reserves open on January 2nd at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on January 11th at 12:01AM EDT
no subject
The flirting alone is enough to cheer him up a bit, and as soon as the cool air hits his face and the door shuts out the noise, he feels more like his normal self again. He walks over to the railing, braces his arms against it - for a second, it looks like he's relaxing. Then he glances over his shoulder to make sure Yuffie's watching, before scrambling up and seating himself on the edge.
"You weren't kidding about the view!"
The railing is thick, and his sense of balance is good, and the height and distance stretching down beneath him, almost like it's trying to compel him to fling himself off into it, is thrilling in exactly the right way. He pats the spot next to him and - more carefully than he makes it look - turns around to offer Yuffie a hand up.
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She's grinning madly as she takes him outside. The balcony is her favorite in this place. The dance floor is pretty good. The bar's okay, but the balcony is wonderful. She looks up at the stars and is positive that it's still all kinds of wrong. The view is beautiful. You can see out over the city forever. She loves it.
Yuffie leans against the railing as he climbs up, watching him carefully. He looks so much like what she's seen in her head. He sounds like it. The hint of that is enough to make her want to follow him until she figures it all out.
When he offers her his hand, she looks at it, and her smile grows. She pulls herself up with him and sits down. The Carnies are well known for their reckless choices, and Yuffie is no different.
She looks off into the darkness and laughs, kicking her feet off into space.
"It's amazing, isn't it?" She says, and looks at him.
"You can practically see the entire city from here!"
no subject
The sky's filled with stars, and he's getting a little cold.
"Have you lived here long?" he asks. "I've only just arrived, so I don't know very much about anything here beyond what it says in the guides. What's that building over there?"
no subject
"I've been here-" She pauses and thinks. "....I've been here a long time. Since I was a kid."
She doesn't really know. It's something that's been bothering her. Much like everything else.
"That right there is Pride HQ. That's where I live." She points to the building and doesn't seem at all worried about learning over the edge out into nothing. "The building's beautiful. It's huge. The Carnies have a penthouse that can practically oversee half the city. It's not as good a view as this one. You can't see the sky like this from there."
She turns to look at him.
"If you're not from here, where're you from?"
no subject
He can't imagine impressing a city girl with talk of the country anyway. In a place like this, you wouldn't even believe the rest of the world existed.
He swallows and kicks his legs. A part of him wants to tell her that he's noticed an instant connection, like they've known each other forever, but it's too early. Might as well try the other insane thing.
"Is Pride HQ as haunted as this place?" he asks, trying to play it off like he's being funny. "I swear I'm not making it up - I saw a ghost in the bathroom a few minutes ago. Is that normal in the city?"
no subject
That's one thing that bothers her. There are so many lights, all the time. It's like in her dreams when everything gets so bright she can barely see. She thinks she'd like to go out to the middle of nowhere and look up to see if the stars are any less wrong. She starts fussing with the pink bracelet on her wrist again. She'd picked it up in a store somewhere because....Because.
She's been wearing it since.
When he mentions the ghosts, she stops, and she slowly turns to look at him.
"Haunted?" Yuffie pauses, and it's like she's relieved to hear it more than anything else.
If weird stuff is happening to him too, then that means...well, she has no idea what it means, anymore than she knows why weird things are happening to her. But that probably means that she isn't totally insane and he really is the guy she's seen.
"I think so. Weird stuff happens. People have weird dreams, see stuff sometimes." She pauses. "Some of that might be all the drugs but some of it's not, I'm sure."
Because that's easier to say than 'I have seen my best friend light her hand on fire, nothing is weird to me right now'.
no subject
"I was only really interested in the other kind of stars," he admits, explaining to both of them why he couldn't remember if she was right.
Then he notices her reaction to his comment about the ghost and jerks up straight like someone's grabbed his strings.
"You mean it? You've seen it too?" He shakes his hair out of his eyes, and shuffles closer to her, suddenly very interested and serious. He'd thought it was a trick of his mind, which often liked to throw up things to confuse him - maybe caused by the stress over his upcoming band placement, or by being more drunk than he'd allowed for and seeing faces in glinting light. He'd been hoping he'd be able to enjoy creeping her out with the story and then joke with her back and forth about whether ghosts were real, and how it was unfair that he saw one seeing as he didn't believe in them. But this means it's common. This means what happened to him was real.
"I thought my drink might have been tampered with at first," he said, "but it couldn't have been. I was sat by the drinks the whole time. There's no way I wouldn't have noticed." And he didn't really care for drugs - his brain chemistry was such that they just resulted in either sadness or fury. "How long has this been going on? Do you know anything?"
no subject
"I'm glad you found us so entertaining. I mean, I think I'm pretty awesome." She says, gives him a sly look.
As for the ghosts, Yuffie nods seriously.
"Can you keep a secret?" She doesn't trust people normally like this. Not out of the gate, not without knowing someone for a while. She isn't an idiot. She's sitting on a railing far up above the city, with someone she's only met, talking about something that is terrifying to everyone, and she feels like she's the safest she has been since she didn't know when.
"These kinds of things? They've been seeing them for months. I've seen a few things myself." She thinks about Luci's eyes or Kido's. She thinks about the music or the scar on her ribs. She leans against his shoulder as she talks. "Some people have seen ghosts, some people have heard things. Some people have had dreams while they're wide awake."
"Not hallucinations either, like...visions."
She knows it sounds insane but she...she knows she can trust him.
no subject
"I think I might have had one," he says. Now that he has a name to give to that incomprehensible, white flood of feeling, he has a way to begin to understand it. "I felt like - " he pauses, "this is embarrassing, but it felt like I was in some kind of red-light district in a surrealistic city. A city that didn't make any sense - a district the city didn't want. I went into a room with a girl, but all I found in there was the ghost I saw here, a ghost that looked like me."
There. He's said it. And it actually wasn't so bad - this whole conversation has been so weird that he feels he's gone beyond being judged.
"I've got enough to worry about already," he admits. "But if this is happening to everyone, I suppose I've gotta do something about it. You can't change anything by just sitting back and looking at it."
no subject
All she knows is that it may not be safe, but he's here. And that means she is going to..win? Fix things? She has no idea. But she thinks that they can pretty much do anything. It's like how she fully believes Luci could take over anything, and she'd be right there with her. It's nice.
"I've seen cities, too." She looks out over this one as she talks. "One's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It's old, and has a legacy, and there's a tower that's taller than anything else. Not as tall as these, but it's been there forever. And it's gonna stay there forever... it's...I can't even explain it. It's just wonderful."
Yuffie sounds hopelessly in love with this city she can't even name, and she's smiling broadly.
"And then there's another, it's-"
On fire.
'I didn't know it was this bad'
The vision skips and stutters flashing green and she knows she's missing something and she can't even say what it is.
--- keeps telling him not to look. Like she's terrified. The man who looks like Cloud, he's trying to calm her down. Trying to tell her it's okay.
Yuffie looks away, and watches as a house falls in only to hear that voice speaking.
'I see you finally understand.'
He's menacing, and tall and he scares her. They're all watching as he speaks. He's...he's.
The green fades from behind her eyes and she's shivering when she can see again, for real. She's not even sure how long she was distracted, but it's left her feeling sharp edged and wrong.
Maybe that city was better for later.
She tries to cover for the moment by curling further into his side and flashing him a grin that might even be convincing.
"Sorry, it's cold out here, ya know?"
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"We should go back inside." He doesn't make any attempt to move - he's enjoying being held onto like this. How long has it been? "But, uh, I think you ought to give me your number."
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She's looking up at him for a moment, like she's thinking really intently. It might be a little disconcerting because it's the sort she tends to do before she does something strange or ridiculous. She takes a deep breath, and nods, before speaking again.
"Cloud?" She waits for a moment, until she has his attention, and then kisses him on the cheek.
She pauses for a moment, and then shrugs, like she's playing it particularly cool.
"...I just felt like doing that."
As if that is a perfectly reasonable explanation.
no subject
It's like this whole conversation - uncomfortable, but he definitely likes it.
He thinks this is his signal to reach across and kiss her properly, and he really is just about to do it, really, when he hears something that he thinks might be the whir of a drone coming up from below, and so he turns and hops back down onto the balcony, gesturing in the sound's direction with a hand. Paparazzi weren't really interested in him as a member of S⭐O⭐L⭐D⭐I⭐E⭐R and were even less interested in his solo stuff - he has no experience in what to do, and can only really guess he's getting the etiquette right.
Still, once he's got his phone ready, he makes sure that he's standing in a pretty good pose, just in case his picture does get taken.