towerofjamjars | What it says on the tin

Entry tags:

test drive meme

What it says on the tin

TEST DRIVE MEME

You want to join the game with a (new) character? Maybe you’re simply curious about the premise? Or maybe you just need a sample. Well that’s the meme for you to try and test your character as if they were already in the tower! The meme is open to anyone!

• Reply to this entry with a character you consider apping! Put your character’s name and fandom- Your usual meme thing.
• Comment around with your pups. You can also post and tag with characters already in-game of course!
• Most importantly, have fun!!
• ~~Then feel free to go and reserve and app your character when those open.~~

Have a number of prompts to get you started:

[Floor 29]: This floor has seemed pretty peaceful so far, the maze isn't all that hard and the garden that lies beyond it is rather lovely. Still it seems best to head back now that the sun is about to set and nighttime is approaching fast. ...Is that just the leaves rustling in the wind behind you, or is it something more?

[Floor 56]: Oh this looks definitely like an useful floor - the room stretches into a hospital ward, dusty and old, a surgical suite surrounded by a maze of empty beds. The closer you look, the more you'll find that the first impression is quite deceiving - no medical supplies of any sort, unstable lights and what was that noise just now?! Clearly you are the only one on this floor. Or are you?

[Floor 25]: After all you have seen so far, this just might be the first truly innocent floor you see. But is it truly as trustworthy as it seems...? Many other people seem to think so at least! Come and see what they are up to?

[Elevators]: It's quite a long ride between the Dormitories and the Cafeteria - it probably doesn't help that the minutes and seconds seem to stretch out more and more towards eternity, what a hassle. Are well, maybe there is someone stuck with you and up to provide conversation... or entertainment~

[Anywhere]: Do you still have track of just where you are after spending your day exploring the Tower of Animus? If not, you might want to ask someone... or just start climbing the stairs regardless of where you are! Nighttime is approaching fast...

[Event]: Just earlier this day you have been called for (and/or brought in to) an unscheduled collar check-up, in which the color of your collar was changed. It takes a few hours, but soon you feel the effects of it, feel lightheaded and dizzy, feel all your power slip out of your control. Or maybe you heavy to the point of breaking down on the spot, while just none of your powers seem to work. Either way... hopefully you are at a safe place or in friendly company... That is, if either of these things exist in this tower.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Unnervingly cavalier describes it perfectly, but to be fair, he wasn't bothered much by blood before this, either. Comes with the territory, really.

At her second comment, though, he makes something of a face, looking somewhere far off behind her.]

A bit more than half a year in their calendar.

[Which is half the length of Auldrant's, but hey, whatever, still a long time.]

There's other people who have been here longer, but none of the others from Auldrant.

[She has no way of knowing how the tower's calendar differs from Auldrant's, and so she frowns. She knows it hasn't been half a year since she last saw him.

But if this place was a refuge for people from destroyed worlds, then who could say? Perhaps he'd simply escaped the ruins of Auldrant more quickly than she had.]

How many of us from Auldrant are there..?

[At this point, Asch isn't even surprised by people telling him he's supposed to be dead.]

Myself, Anise, the replica Ion, the original Ion, and a version of Luke from a different version of Auldrant.

[And if she didn't know about Ion yet. Uh. Spoilers?]

[She knows that Ion was a replica, but she never would have dreamed for the chance to meet his original. Nor would she have entertained the idea of another Luke. The shock is easy to see in her eyes though she does her best to hide it.]

That's... Forgive me. It sounds impossible. [She knows Asch wouldn't lie to her, however.]

There's plenty of impossible things around here. You get used to it fast.

[Like, you know, being dropped through the floor and going up, somehow getting bloody in the process. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

True to form, though, Asch doesn't let it particularly bother him as he looks around at the darkening floor.]

We should get out off this floor. I don't know what this one does at night, but I'd rather not die today.

[Impossible things... like surviving the total destruction of their homeworld. If Natalia is to accept that she is here, then she must also accept that there will be other things she has trouble wrapping her mind around, and that they are true. Insisting that it is a lie when it so clearly is not won't get her anywhere.]

Die today..?

[He says that as though dying is a regular occurrence here. Perhaps that's another of the impossible things of which he speaks. As she ponders that she pulls an arrow from her quiver and notches it.

This floor might be dangerous if he is worried about dying, and Natalia would hate to be a burden. She'll be ready to fight should it come to that.]

Yes, let's go. I've heard that it's easiest to escape most mazes if we keep one hand on the wall as we go along...

[Such wisdom may not apply here, however.]

It'd be a hassle I don't want to deal with.

[Then again, he doesn't exactly have plans tomorrow. Asch keeps on his guard, but doesn't bother putting a hand to his sword as of yet.]

Normally that would be fine, but I don't fancy the idea of giving the bushes a way to grab my hand.

[...Tower oldbie problems.]

[Natalia looks to the hedges with a newly appraising eye. Perhaps it had been foolish of her to assume that this was a simple hedge maze.]

...I'll do it, then. [It will leave her unable to use her bow, but she'd prefer it to wandering lost in here forever. And she trusts Asch to cut her free if the plants should try and grab her. She stows her arrow, adjusts her bow to be slung over her back, and puts a hand to the leafy wall of the maze. Then she begins walking.]

Don't be stupid.

[Even as she's walking off, Asch reaches out without hesitation and pulls her hand from the hedge.]

First rule of the Tower: Don't risk any injury you don't have to.

How would you propose that we escape from the maze, then? I don't want to be trapped here all night either.

[If she's curt with you it isn't because she's really angry, Asch. It's more a frustration about not being to do something as simple as find her way out of a maze. If she can't help herself, what can she hope to do for the people of her ruined world?]

[Don't worry, Natalia. It'll all be okay. Belkend is to the east, after all.]

We can still follow the wall. Just don't touch it.

[She stares at him for a long moment, her cheeks coloring somewhat at the realization that such a simple solution had escaped her. It's embarrassing, to be acting like such a child in front of him, but the shock of seeing him is still so raw that she can't help herself.

Then she nods, and turns to start following the wall again.]

Is there anything else I'll need to know during my stay here?

[It's okay, Natalia, he's kind of used to you making a fool of yourself at times like this. Her question gets a wry, bitter smile - Asch pauses a moment and shakes a bit of dried blood free of his glove.

Where to begin.]

The only things rescued from our world - Auldrant, and it's the same for anyone else - is our souls. Your body is fake. This maze is fake. Almost everything is layers of illusions over metal frames.

[She comes to an abrupt stop ahead of him. His words shake her at her core and chill her to the bone. She doesn't speak, and it's questionable whether she even breathes, for a good long while.

When she turns back to him, she is quite obviously distraught.]

No. That can't be... [Her voice is pleading.] I'd believe anything else you said, but Asch, that can't be true. It simply can't.

[Well, he's not really surprised by that reaction. That's what plenty of people were saying while it was happening, when the glamour came crashing down.]

Give it long enough and the illusion system flickers. It's the truth.

[The truth is all they have, really.]

But why...

[The soul forms the crux of who they really are. Natalia knows this, and yet she can't help but be deeply disturbed when she looks down at the body that isn't really hers. She wants him to be wrong. She needs him to be wrong.

But he isn't. The illusion fails for a brief moment and Natalia gets a glimpse of what she really is under their magic.]

Aaah!

[Even knowing that it was going to happen isn't enough to keep her from screaming.]

[Asch, for his part, is completely undisturbed; he's gotten used to the glamour fails well enough over the last month.

Indeed, he actually uses it to his advantage, now, glancing through the film in search of the stairs.]

Looks like it's this way.

[...Right, he should probably try to calm Natalia down.]

This isn't a place to panic. Come on.

How can you be so calm...

[It's not just because he's been here for so long. Natalia has no doubts that the Asch she knew on Auldrant would have been able to handle himself just fine here as well.

But she can't understand how he has the strength to simply look at it and keep going. Perhaps it's because the loss of Natalia's title hadn't been the same as the loss of his life. He's already much more accustomed to knowing that what seems to be the truth isn't.]

Getting upset isn't going to do any good.

[Practical to the death is he. Literally in some isolated cases. And the fact that he didn't find out all this at once probably helps, too.]

This way.

[He's probably headed in the right direction thanks to that momentary flicker of the film, at least.]

[In less than twenty-four hours, Natalia has lost her home, her family, a good portion of her friends, and now even herself. Everything but her soul and perhaps the man in front of her, though he has been changed enough by his time in the tower that she wouldn't be at all surprised if he's moved far past whatever tenuous bond they'd shared up until the moment they had been taken from their world.

It was said that absence made the heart grow fonder, but there was another saying, too: Out of sight, out of mind. She doesn't want to believe that of Asch, but she'd been hard-pressed to keep something of a friendship with him even when they'd encountered each other every so often on Auldrant...

And yet he is still taking the time to lead her out, so perhaps whatever connection is between them is still salvageable. Natalia will hold fast to that hope.]

Thank you, Asch. It means a lot that you're willing to help me.

It's nothing.

[It's really not; like hell is he going to leave Natalia back here to get eaten by bushes or something. Truthfully, he'd help almost anyone out of this maze if they needed it, but that doesn't mean Natalia isn't important.

(He'd leave Van to rot, and Saturos. The ones who deserve to suffer are the ones who made others suffer.)

A right turn - a dead end. He's already turning on his heel to backtrack a little to the previous split in the path.]

It's not a place that anyone can handle alone.

[The Tower as a whole, that is, not the maze. Even he has to admit that.]

[Not a place anyone can handle alone, and yet...]

Have you... become closer to Luke, and Anise, and the two Ions, since you've been here?

[Asch seems reasonably well-adjusted, given that it's the tower and given that it's Asch. He had been so abrasive in his dealings with the rest of her friends that she feared they would never be able to see eye-to-eye, but perhaps having a common enemy in this environment had changed that.

She would like it very much if that did turn out to be the case, she decides as she turns to follow him when he changes direction.]

...Only the replica Ion, really.

[He and Anise are still awkward, but on good enough terms. Orion and Luke? He doesn't really give too much of a crap.]

It's not like it's just them around here.

[Backhandedly admitting that he sort of has friends from other worlds. Like the ladies down thread. Oops.]

But...

[He had said that those four were the only others from Auldrant in the tower. Natalia looks puzzled, but then it hits her and her eyes go wide.]

You've been making new acquaintances?

[The amount of surprise in her voice might be a little insulting.]

[Just a little]

Is it that surprising?

[Giving you the totally unimpressed look over his shoulder right now, princess, and then turning the corner.]

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