phantasmemes | TEST DRIVE 005

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!test drive

TEST DRIVE 005

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...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Got it in one. They're called Fissures and they've apparently been a problem for a long while now. Something's pulling people through, we're not quite sure what or why.

There's a research station run by some androids who were studying these things. It's a bit of a trip from the city, but it's not that far... they've been letting people dragged through stay there. They've got technology that helps stabilize Fissures--I couldn't tell you the first thing about how it works though--and some of the people staying there go on expeditions to place the stabilizers. A bunch of the people in the city are on one of these expeditions.

[So that's why there's people here in this seemingly abandoned city. They're here to stabilise the place. Too late, in his opinion, but that's his luck, really]

Well, that's a mystery. I'm also guessing they're too unstable to send anyone back where they came from.

[Sync specifically avoids calling it 'his world' because Auldrant is not his world. It's just a place he happened to come from. He hates Auldrant too much to give it that connection to himself]

What is an android? I've never heard that word before.

That's right.

[She runs a hand through her bangs.]

Artificial beings made from machinery... these ones are also made from magic, too, though. They're humanoid but obviously mechanical. I haven't really talked to them all that much, but they seem nice enough.

Advanced robots of some kind. Alright.

[Note to self: if these androids are the ones making sure everything is going smoothly, pray that Dist never gets brought here]

So it's basically...stay where they are, possibly help out stabilising areas like this, hope that eventually something gets figured out so that people can be returned to where they came from?

That's the gist of it, yeah.

[She finally takes a drink of her water.]

... I'm Akira Kurusu, by the way.

That sounds interesting, I guess.

[But ultimately pointless for someone like Sync. So what is someone like him supposed to do here? It's a question he'll have to think on]

Sync. Just Sync. Never had a last name.

It's never boring at least.

[She nods at the introduction.]

It's nice to meet you... Some of the androids have a base camp established down here. Have you recovered enough to start heading that way? It's a little nicer there than... [Gesturing to their immediate surroundings.]

[He waves off the whole 'nice to meet you' thing. Sync's never really been good at social skills, it's easier to avoid then try and pull it off]

Yeah, I'll be fine. It was just up there that was bothering me. Not fond of heat and fire in that amount.

[He wouldn't have explained, but given her help, Sync decides it's fine to partially explain why he froze up. It's not the full thing, but it should reassure that it won't happen down here]

[That gets a small wince and she nods.]

That'd do it... Let's go, then.

[She stands up and starts brushing herself off. She's... pretty confident she remembers which direction it's in, but hopefully there's a glowing gold arrow around to put them on the right track (ha).]

[Sync also stands up, dusting himself off briefly and looking around to check for any potential threats]

Alright. Lead the way.

Mm.

[And lead the way she does! She's mostly silent during the walk, but eventually she slows to a stop.]

... Did you hear something?

[Something sounds faintly like growling...]

[And he follows, keeping a little distance between them since personal space is a good but not too far either. When she stops, Sync glances around, hearing that]

...yeah, I hear it.

[Sync shifts to balance himself better, his hands curling into fists] You said there were dogs down here that'd been affected by the instability, right?

That's right. They shouldn't be too much trouble if it's only a few, but if it's a bigger pack it could get a little messy.

[Those blue flames from earlier appear again, some settling into the shape of her mask and the rest transforming her clothes.]

But I think the two of us can handle some mutts juuuuuust fine, don't you?

[She shifts a bit herself, grinning. It's just as she's pulling out a knife that the first of the dogs come into view.]

[Sync has to smirk a little, eyes snapping onto the dogs as they appear]

I'd be a pretty poor God-General if I couldn't handle a couple of simple monsters. This'll be easy.

[He doesn't draw a weapon, instead focusing on their foes. Those dogs still have some distance to cross to reach them. Which means pretty much one thing, with Akira seemingly ready to melee. Sync starts casting, a purple glyph appearing under his feet as he starts channelling the wind around him, changing it into lightning that gathers in the air above him.

Also rather idly, a little bit of the green fonons he directs over to Akira, where they collide with her arm and disappear. Friend-or-Foe markers are important kids]

[She blinks as she spots the fonons, but decides she has more important priorities when one of the dogs leaps at her.

A glance over to Sync tells her clearly to buy some time while he's casting, so as she knocks the first dog away, more of those flames shimmer over her mask. The mask, however, isn't in place for long as it turns into fire and swirls above her, reforming as some sort of bird.]

Jatayu!

[The bird screeches as it casts a Marakunda, weakening the dogs for whatever Sync's got in store for them... as well as her own strikes, as she slashes at another one.]

[Well that's something interesting all right. He appreciates the time bought, and it doesn't take him long to finishing casting, deciding to warn Akira that he was by using the incantation]

O storm cloud, those thy blade... [The lightning above him changes shape, forming itself into a sword] ...Thunder Blade!

[The lightning sword crashes down, aimed roughly at the centre of the pack so that the area of effect around the arte will catch as many of them as he can with searing lightning. No matter where Akira ends up however, the arte doesn't touch her, merely felt as static passing her by]

[She jumps back as she hears the incantation, so she's at least not right in the thick of it. The bird's vanished and reformed into her mask by now, so her surprise isn't immediately visible when she only feels static.

... Cool.

The arte does take care of most of the dogs, a couple near the rear of the pack turning tail and running off, but leaving some of the rest in the front. Akira just grins as she switches Personas again--then summons.]

Mothman!

[Might as well keep rolling with the electricity, Akira thinks. And so something shaped like a friend appears, blasting the rest of the stragglers with a Mazionga--the skill easily finishing off the ones that had already been damaged by Thunder Blade.]

Heh, no problem at all...

[He watches as the few surviving dogs turn tail as the unfortunate ones fall to the summon. He's reminded briefly of Arietta, but these are definitely different to her beasts. The magic in their summoning, for starters]

Not bad. You've got some nice skills.

[Sync's impressed despite himself. It's always nice to know when people you're fighting with are capable of holding their own]

Ah, thanks...

[She pushes her mask up to rest on her head, then grins. Akira is definitely impressed. The power this guy's packing... wow.]

Gotta say, what you did was pretty badass.

Heh. It was only an fonic arte, though admittedly one of my preferred ones. Not much can outrun lightning.

[Sync might heavily lean on his wind artes. Which includes the lightning ones thanks to Auldrant's odd elemental system]

Fonic arte, huh... that's a new one. Still pretty cool, though.

[All these different magic systems... how exciting.]

Don't I know it about lightning though...

[Thank goodness for Metaverse-induced sturdiness, she has probably taken the brunt of a number of electric skills that would leave a lot of regular people badly hurt.]

Artes use fonons, elementally aligned energy particles. There's a couple of types of artes.

[The basics of them. Maybe fonons are unique to Auldrant, with how the planet was formed. Wouldn't surprise him, at this point. Things are too weird, Sync is already starting to reform his ideas of what should and shouldn't be]

Had a lot of unfortunate experience with it?

[Don't mind him, he's going to examine the dogs while they talk. He's curious to see if there's any real change to them or if their mutations were entirely magic instability]

What's the other type, then?

[She's going to pull out her water bottle from earlier to take another drink from it in the meantime.

The sparks running down their fur are still there, even though the dogs themselves are dead... the mutation is seemingly permanent.]

Enough to know I prefer not being on the receiving end of it. Shift around your elemental weaknesses constantly and something's gonna nail you in one eventually. I'm just lucky that I can take that kind of punishment better as a Persona-user than an ordinary human would...

Fonic artes are the larger spells, with a couple of levels to them from basic to advanced. Strike artes channel fonons into the user's weapon, or body, letting it direct the fonons in the attack. Mystic artes are the largest of the spells, designed to do massive amounts of damage in a small time frame.

[The words come easily to him, and it's almost relaxing to remember the training he did to understand artes and how to use them. As he finishes looking over the dogs, he stands up again and stretches briefly]

Ouch. [He can sympathise. Sync might as well be considered wind-aligned as far as elements go, but he's been hit by a few lightning artes before. None of them were fun] What's a Persona?

I see...

[It's easy enough to understand, and she files that information away for reference.]

Versatility comes at a cost... [She shrugs.] Those things I summoned are called Personas. They're kind of like... well, I guess they're best described as aspects of one's self given form, a name, and power. Most Persona-users only have one at a time, but a Wildcard--that's what I am--can switch between several.

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