TEST DRIVE 005

[phantasmods]

Hello and welcome to the fifth 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 time, the Test Drive takes place in Incendia - a less-ruined-than-expected city that has been abandoned for over a century, due to the magical effects of the Fissure (unstable reality region) that have made it impossible to live in. What effects are these, you ask?

Well...

BY DAY

By day, the city is lovely, if oddly empty. The sun shines down, and magical lights along the sidewalk - the equivalent of power lines - flow energy throughout the city. It's possible to think that the little sparks you sometimes see at the corner of your vision are related. After all, there's a great deal of magic in the air...

But in spite of this, the city lies abandoned, for no immediately apparent reason. You might have found yourself in a wide-open shipping yard, where large metal containers levitate about, moving without any help or oversight from human hands. Be careful; these containers changing positions make it easy to get lost for quite a long time, since few of them have much in the way of identifying traits over than color. Didn't you already pass that arrangement of two red ones on top of a blue one before...?

Or perhaps you're in the massive park in the center of town, with its blatantly magical fountain (a half-dome of water just hanging in the air) and the tents of an abandoned festival. Two stages and a long line of street food booths stand empty - surely no one will mind if you use them for something, right?

Or perhaps you're just suddenly on the streets, among stalled-out taxis and cars that go nowhere and lack the familiar smell of gasoline. There's apartments and shops all around, with little gardens spilling out over balconies... Maybe if you go knock on some doors, you'll find people.

Wherever it is you are, surely there's got to be someone around who can tell you what's going on, right...?

BY DUSK

As night falls, rather than dropping the way you might expect, the temperature begins to rise. And then the sparks in the edges of your vision are very much more than simply at the edges of your vision. They catch first on the plants, the papers stuck to the now-lit magical streetlights, the trash cans... And then, increasingly so, on the buildings proper, the shops, the skyscrapers, the cars in the street.

Within half an hour, an inferno is starting to build, and it's clear that there's not going to be anywhere above ground safe from it. But fortunately, there's safety beneath the level of the streets - if you can make your way fast enough to an underground station.

BY NIGHT

In the remains of these subway tunnels, lit mostly by the dim glow of magical energy lines, you're at least safe from the inferno above. Unlike the aboveground parts of the city, however, the tunnels are in an obvious state of disrepair, with broken concrete, rot, and mildew. The stations might have once been clean, but they quite transparently are not now, and the tunnels themselves are as bad or worse.

Thankfully, no trains run anymore, so you're not at risk of being run down on the broken tracks. There's also not any full-on collapses blocking the way, and the tunnels seem well-enough made that there's probably not risk of a cave-in.

Less pleasantly, you aren't the only thing taking shelter in the tunnels from the firestorm above. And the magic of that flame has touched the feral dogs that rove the tunnels, turning them into barking, howling creatures of as much flame as flesh themselves. And then there's the occasional patch of mold, mildew, and slime in the darkest parts of the tunnels, where even the magical circuits have gone out, that moves to douse any light that comes near it...

Comments

[redmeguca]

Basically, we entered a contract where we fight monsters in exchange for a wish and magic powers.

[Yeah, that's right, a wish.]

[riderofcharlemagne]

A wish? Just like that?

[No killing involved?!]

[redmeguca]

It's a bit more complicated than that, lots of fine print, but yeah. The downsides aren't really worth it unless your wish is super important.

[riderofcharlemagne]

Ah.

[Of course, it's too good to be true.]

Was your wish that important?

[redmeguca]

...No, it wasn't.

[The next hound gets a particularly aggressive thrust through it's gut... That doesn't immediately kill it. Oh dear.]

[riderofcharlemagne]

[The change doesn't go unnoticed.]

If it was something you wanted, then you should have no regrets over it.

[He takes care of that hound with his lance, giving it a rather merciful bash to the skull.]

[redmeguca]

[That actually gets a wince out of her.]

Everyone has regrets, and anyone who says otherwise is a damn idiot!

[Kyoko's fighting even more viciously now, her strikes landing harder.]

My wish ended with my whole damn family dead!

[riderofcharlemagne]

Well, I won't deny that I'm an idiot. [He keeps at the hounds, knocking them back.] You shouldn't have had to go through something like that, true. [He's not about to tell a kid her family should've died.] But tragedies and mistakes are bound to happen, lingering on regret does nothing to change it.

[redmeguca]

I know that, you can't change what's already happened.

[Unless you're Homura.]

But you can make sure it never happens again. I was wrong to say that magic should only be used for yourself, but you shouldn't assume you know what other people want either. And you have to do it for the right reasons.

[Her spear lunges through a hounds skull at those last words, and she's looking away from Astolfo.]

[riderofcharlemagne]

Huh? [Well, he wouldn't say she's wrong in any of that, but...] That sounds kind of personal.

[redmeguca]

[The last hound in the area meets it's end at Kyoko's hand, and with a flash of red light Kyoko is in her normal outfit.]

It is. I knew someone who promised herself to never regret anything, and it destroyed her.

[riderofcharlemagne]

Why? [His tone softens, but that nagging curiosity...]

[redmeguca]

Hehe... She almost regretted saving one of her friends from a monster because they both liked the same boy. It's pretty stupid. But she didn't think so, especially when she found out we're just corpses piloted around by our Soul Gems. She got it into her head that fighting Witches was the only thing she was good for anymore, and she wasn't even good at that.

[Kyoko stares at the ring that's now on her right hand.]

She gave in to despair and became the very thing she had been fighting. That's how Magical Girls work, the more people we help with our wish, the more people we curse when we become Witches.

[riderofcharlemagne]

[That's undeniably tragic, and he can't help but feel for Kyoko and her friend for being dragged into such a situation.] What did she wish for?

[redmeguca]

The guy she liked was a violinist that got into an accident. The doctors said his arm would never fully recover, so she used her wish to prove them wrong. You can see how that would cause some doubt to her motives, right?

[riderofcharlemagne]

Mm, I can see it.

[He gives a nod.]

If that's what she truly wanted, though, to help someone else- what's so wrong about that?

[redmeguca]

Intentions are everything. Did she heal his arm because she just wanted to help him? Or did she do it to hear his music again, or because she wanted him to like her back? She made her wish without even knowing why she made it, and it came back and bit her in the ass.

[Finished speaking, Kyoko pulls an apple out and starts tearing into it.]

[riderofcharlemagne]

Does she need any other reason besides wanting to do it? That's plenty reason enough, you don't have to justify yourself further.

[redmeguca]

She does, because it makes the difference between her helping him because she wanted to and helping him because she thought she'd get something out of it!

[Her pace of eating is speeding up now.]

[riderofcharlemagne]

As long as it was her decision, and she made it herself, what does it matter?

[redmeguca]

I thought a hero would know the difference, but apparently not! The doubt, the grief, it killed her and left that damn Witch in her place!

[She's tearing through the apples at this rate, the bag is already half empty.]

[riderofcharlemagne]

A hero doesn't have to be completely selfless. Whatever her motive for doing it was, I can't fault her for doing what she wanted. [This is how Astolfo lives his life, and thinks others could afford to do the same, sometimes.] Grief, doubt, despair...those things are all unavoidable. That's just how it is to be human. [He says it with more fondness than is appropriate for the situation.] I'm sorry that your friend suffered for them.

[redmeguca]

Well Sayaka didn't believe that! She wanted to be a "Hero of Justice," saving people and righting wrongs!

[She drops an apple core to the ground as she processes Astolfo's second statement.]

You think I don't know that?! I'm fighting off those feelings every damn day of my life!

[riderofcharlemagne]

What's wrong with that? Saving others and making things right? What's wrong with being a hero?

[He struggles to follow what Kyoko's trying to get at.]

Maybe you need to let some things go. Everything up until now - that's just the past. You don't need to carry it with you anymore.

[redmeguca]

I'm not just going to abandon Sayaka like that! If I couldn't save her from being alone when she died, I'll be damn sure to keep her in my memory!

[With a flash of red light, Kyoko is holding her spear.]

Why don't you just get out of here before you piss me off even more.