phantasmemes | TEST DRIVE 002

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test drive

TEST DRIVE 002

Hello, and welcome to the second test drive for Phantasmal Rift!

Test drive threads are assumed to be game canon for accepted characters unless otherwise noted, so don't feel like you'll have to introduce yourself a second time to everyone you meet! As an added bonus, participation in the test drive comes with the chance to earn up to two items of loot for your trouble! Characters who are accepted can earn one item for having a top level, and one for tagging out to someone else's top level! Your SWEET LOOT will be included with your acceptance notice.

Additionally, characters currently in game can earn themselves a piece of bonus loot for the dungeon by tagging people's top-levels on the test drive! Existing characters get their bonus loot along with the rest of their loot at the conclusion of the dungeon.

This test drive is based in the Fissure nearest to the Station, same as last time! But this time you're coming at the shoreline from a bit of a different angle...

If you really want, though, you can reuse prompts from the first test drive! In particular, there's still landsharks around the new area of beach. Otherwise, here's three new prompts!

OPTION ONE: OCEAN BREEZE

The cavern you find yourself in smells of the sea... And looks like it, too. Large crystal formations, usually in blue or a light yellow-green, glow along the walls and ceiling of the cavern, providing more than enough light to see by. The whole place is damp and a little chilly, and occasional pools of water rise and fall with gentle waves - some outside tide flowing in through underground passages.

More chilling, though, is the wind that flows through the caves, never ever quite going still but varying wildly in intensity. In fact, characters will discover that they have some control over the intensity of the wind - or perhaps some lack of control, depending on their exact response to waking up in an unexpected place. Strong emotions of any sort make the wind stronger in turn; while calm leaves the wind gentle, panic will send it whipping around corners and drive already-distressed characters to take whatever shelter they can, lest they get blown into some cavern wall.

Other than the wind and the crystals, the caverns seem mostly normal for a place that's clearly underwater at least part of the time. The lower reaches of the caverns are full of barnacles, mussels, and other shellfish that await the rising of the tide for their survival, as well as the occasional crab (some of them surprisingly large, up to about the same of a man's head), and bits of seaweed catch on rocky corners.

OPTION TWO: SAY NYA

What's that sound? Is it... a cat?

... No, it's not. It's a meowing seagull, for some reason.

Except for their strange vocalizations (all feline in nature), the seagulls found outside around the cliffs and beaches are all reasonably normal. (Specifically, anyone familiar with the Gulf Coast on Earth will find that they look much like Laughing Gulls in their black-headed plumage.) They're normal-sized and not at all afraid of people...

In fact, they're so unafraid of people, that they'll come right up close to you and nick your stuff! And not just food, mind. Anything they can carry that isn't attached is fair game to be taken and winged up the cliffs to their roosts. Magpies have nothing on these guys.

Good luck chasing them down for whatever it is they've taken, or climbing up the cliffs to get it back. It belongs to the seacats now.

OPTION THREE: ALL THAT GLITTERS

This gravel beach is absolutely splendid in the sunlight, looking like someone shattered a thousand stained glass windows and left the wreckage to sparkle. Protected from the worst of the waves by some rocky outcrops in the distance, the water here is gentle and doesn't disturb the beach much.

Luckily, the glitter does not, in fact, come from glass. Close examination will reveal that the gravel of the beach contains an impressive number of fragments of some kind of hard scale - about a third, if one's going by volume. They vary in size from a large thumb-nail down to nothing, and most transparent in every color imaginable. They're quite hard, and more likely to break into fragments than they are to be ground down by the sand.

But what is it that these scales come from? The answer can be found only at night, when the sun's light disappears. Then, large reptilian-looking creatures - somewhere between snakes and fish - make their way out of the crannies hidden in the rocks around and across from the small beach. In many different colors, they glow beneath the waves, some internal light filtered through their skin and scales to make each appear a different color.

The serpents aren't violent, at least for now, but given that the largest of them is at least twenty feet long... Perhaps it's best not to hassle them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He wasn't sure if this was a 'normal' reaction to his abilities or not. On the one hand, this was significantly better than the panic of his adopted parents the first time they'd seen it, but on the other, he wasn't sure how to take the intense interest in something he usually endeavored to keep hidden.]

I haven't, but I just got here myself. I'm not clear on how, either. Last thing I knew I was in my dorm room and then suddenly I was waking up in a cavern.

[Which he sounds incredibly calm about, given the circumstances. There's not a lot of inflection to his voice.]

[How interesting. For someone who was lost somewhere, like he was, was quite calm. Izuku knew he wasn't terrified but that was because he'd seen worse things. He had witnessed a monster murder a man with his fingers. He remembered the event as clear as day even now. He could face something like this if he could get enough data. That was why he needed to make allies and contacts. Enemies wouldn't do anything good for him right now.]

I remember something more. A strange...energy source. Like a hole in reality. I fell through and woke up in the cavern. I hit my head somewhere along the way. [He reaches up and moves his hair to show the scabbed over wound on his forehead.]

Maybe we can look for answers together? Two heads are better than one.

[Julian blinked at Izuku. There was no way he was about to admit that he'd been having a horrific off day and had spent the last eighteen hours curled up in a web under his bed in his dorm room, but there was at least some partial explanation he could offer up for not remembering the energy or hole in reality:] I was asleep. I thought this was a dream at first.

If you hit your head, you might have a concussion. We should probably find somewhere for you to rest for a bit.

[Have the flattest possible look. Walking around a beach with a concussion sounds like a great way to make a bad situation worse.]

You don't really have to worry. I've had worse than a concussion. But if you would feel better, why don't we go find somewhere to sit and talk? Maybe someone from this place will spot us and give us answers. That or we can wait for whoever is behind this to appear and we can take them on together.

[Izuku smiles as he looks over his shoulder. He points to a collection of rocks further up the beach.]

Like over there?

That would be best, [he nods at the rocks,] since I don't know enough First Aid to be useful if you got hurt worse. [He's not worried, he's being practical.] Hopefully someone else will come along; I don't know how cold this place gets at night or how to make shelter in a place like this, either.

[He starts walking towards the rocks, footsteps eerily silent until he seems to remember himself and makes them have some semblance of noise, inhumanly blue eyes glancing reflexively back at Izuku. In an effort to both distract from his own weirdness and avoid further lengthy awkward silences, he asks,] So, where are you from, Izuku?

[Izuku nods and turns. He walks toward the rocks and smiles. He looks back at Julian when he hears the question. He smiles yet again.]

I'm from Japan. I go to UA High School. Have you ever heard of it?

[He tilts his head a little with the question. Time to see if Julian is from his world or not. Everyone knows about UA back home. If he doesn't, he has his answer. Simple process of elimination.]

No, I haven't. I'm from the United States - well, more or less - though, so that might be why.

[He was vaguely aware of the weeaboo contingent of his high school that had started a penpal program with some school in Japan, but he had neither understood their fascination nor even attempted to. Julian can tell when a question is loaded when someone smiles that much for no reason, despite lacking in social graces, after having seen so much of that when he was a kid. He just doesn't know the significance of what he's being asked and probably wouldn't lie if he did. Lying wasn't something he had a lot of skill in, frankly.]

Well that's alright. It's the number one hero school in the world. People from all around the world enroll and try to get in. Only 2 in every 100 or so applicants get in. I'm in Class 1-A. We're training to be professional heroes one day. With a Quirk like yours, I bet you would make a great hero.

[Quirk wise, that is. Julian seemed too emotionless to be a good hero. At least by today's standards. It would depend on his sense of justice. That was what separated the real heroes from the fakes. Not that he had plans, just enjoyed the observations. He sat on the rocks when they arrived.]

What about you? What do you want to be when you finish school?

You must have worked hard to get in. I don't know I would be cut out for that line of work, but it sounds interesting. [For other people. People who knew how to do normal life without it being exhausting.] I never heard of anything like that back home. I hope coming here doesn't throw your semester off. Or mine, for that matter.

I'm going to be a botanist. [He sat down on the rocks, nimbly folding his legs under himself, taking in the beach with the eyes of someone who clearly had limited experience with the ocean.] I've always been interested in plants.

That sounds really interesting. What kind of plants are your favorites?

[Body language was everything. It made up most of the communication between people. The way Julian looked at the beach was telling. Perhaps he never got to go and was from somewhere far from any beach. Maybe it told of a sheltered life. Maybe a fear of water. Whatever the case, he didn't have enough information. That's why they were here right now. That and whatever was causing all of this to occur.]

[He had heard botany was interesting about as often as he'd gotten good reactions to his half-human status: never. For a moment he looks at Izuku as if trying to figure out if he's serious.]

Cacti, succulents, edible flowers, and tree hybrids. I don't really find discussion of invasive plant species interesting, even though rationally I know it's important.

[Julian idly cracked his ankles in turn, mentally comparing the beach to the one his family had visited when he was growing up. The seagulls were the same, but the scant plant life wasn't the same on the beach as in the Pacific Northwest.]

[Izuku nods along. He honestly finds the idea fascinating. What people dream about, what they want to do and be, their dreams. Dreams were important to everyone. Everyone had to have a drive if they wanted to succeed. Not having one only lead to despair and failure.]

I've heard of Cecti, succulents, and edible flowers but tree hybrids? What kind are there?

[He continued to smile. He was happy to talk to someone like this. He could talk to his classmates back home but there was always this air of deception to it. He couldn't be completely honest with them. Here, he had nothing to hide it seemed. At least until he found out if anyone from UA or the League was here too.]

Trees have species families whose veins are usually genetically similar enough that, if you rip bark off of saplings of trees from similar enough species and bind the wounds together, they grow into one tree. That's called Frankensteining trees, which is the base test for if species are similar enough to try to hybridize. My class is studying peach tree hybrids right now.

Theoretically, if trees with traits like disease resistance and high fruit bearing density can be crossed successfully, then the results should be able to produce more food for people, especially in regions where people are sorely lacking in other options for nutrition. It could help a lot of people.

[Izuku no, he'll talk botany at you until the sun sets. He wasn't used to having people even smile and nod along at the tree related talk, even though his parents did their best to pretend to be into it.]

That sounds amazing. I wish I had a notebook and pen so I could write this down. That sounds like it could help a lot of people. I hope the research goes well.

Maybe you could continue it here? If we ever find people, that is. Maybe they have some kind of school here. I mean, if there is civilization, there should be education. Right?

There have been promising breakthroughs with lumber tree species in the past decade. It's not the most exciting work, but I really think we're on the verge of being able to do a lot of good in the world.

Maybe. The plants here may be different than what I'm used to. But it would be nice to be able to help people out while I'm here.

[Izuku nodded. Julian was the kind of person he wanted to help. He wanted to help people and Izuku would be willing to help in any way he could.]

I feel the same way. Let's help the people here together. In any way we can.

[Admittedly, it was a boring kind of help, but it was vital. He couldn't help people on any social or emotional level; he didn't know how. He didn't know how to do a lot of things that other people could, like comfort one another or make others laugh. Science, though, that he understood. That, he could use.]

In any way we can except you doing physical labor until we're sure you're not concussed. I don't want anyone to get hurt here, including you.

Of course! We wouldn't want to push ourselves beyond our limits. I won't do anything too rigorous until we find a doctor and I get my head checked. I promise.

[He nodded and looked around the beach again.]

Sitting here is nice. We can enjoy the scenery and just talk. This is nice.

Good. You seem like a nice person. I wouldn't want to push you.

[He idly pushes his hair behind his ears, blinking in the sun.] Mmm. Reminds me of going to the beach with my parents. It's been a while since we got the chance to do that... I should ask them when the weather gets nice back home again.

You seem like a nice person too.

[He looks out at the ocean and nods.] I should do the same with my mom. We haven't had a day out together in so long. We will do what we can here and get home so we can do that.

Thanks.

I hope we're not here too long. My parents will be really worried.

Well, if we want to get home we should start exploring. No one has come by yet. Maybe we can find someone if we head up the beach. There is bound to be a home or even a town somewhere along the shoreline.

Or we could move away from the water and see if we can find a road.

So long as you're sure you're good to walk. [He gets up, reflexively cracking his ankles and wrists in turn, looking down the shoreline.] There might be a road connecting to the beach. There usually were back home, even on private beaches, to allow emergency access.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TEST DRIVE 002

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