phantasmemes | TEST DRIVE 006

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!test drive

TEST DRIVE 006

Hello and welcome to Phantasmal Rift's Test Drive Meme!

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 takes place in the Telovia Mines, an extremely abandoned magical crystal mine and the town and infrastructure that one supported it. The tunnels are in reasonably good condition and would be reasonably navigable... Except for one thing.

ONE MINOR THING

The magical effects of the Fissure cause those within it to lose something when they arrive - for most people, it's a sense such as touch or hearing, but it's also possible to lose a more esoteric sense (such as your sense of balance or temperature, but NOT things like "sense of morals" or "sense of style"), the ability to speak, or the ability to recognize faces. As a general guideline, whatever characters lose should be non-supernatural in nature, and something they would have taken for granted as a part of their ability to function.

ODDS AND ENDS

Just because the mines are empty of people doesn't mean that they've gone still. While for the most part, the carts full of crystals remain in one place, the huge amount of magic has left more than a few of the miners' abandoned tools still going through their motions. Rusted pickaxes swing at the walls, and dead lanterns swing from the ceiling. Crystals occasionally free themselves from shards of rock to pile into bins, which then empty into already-overflowing mine carts.

As long as you leave them to their jobs, everything will be fine. If you try to stop the tools (and it is the tools themselves, for anyone who might be looking for ghosts) from doing their jobs, they'll chase you down until you leave their general vicinity.

Of course, the eternally working tools don't care much about the structural integrity of the mine tunnels...

THEY ALL PILE UP

...And so, inevitably, there are cave-ins.

Most of them are fairly minor, and you can see them (well, if you can see) enough to just work around them. Some of them are big enough that you're going to have to dig through them first, if you can.

And then there's the handful that block passages entirely. But don't panic! The tunnels are designed around the possibility of this happening - rather than coming to an end, the majority of them loop back around to the main arteries of the mine.

E... ventually...

But you and whoever is stuck with you on this side of the cave-in might be wandering for quite a while before you get there. Hopefully one of you still has a sense of direction, assuming either of you ever had one in the first place.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"O-oh." He just kind of blinks in surprise at that. "I suppose... at least you got some compensation for it all?"

He got a gilded cage. And a truck, the truck is very important. Even if he hasn't really gotten it working yet.

"...What about you? How'd things turn out once yours was over and done with?"

"The only way those of us that died even had a chance of making it out is because someone working for the organization running things had... bodies on hand. They're called gigai, blank slates essentially that adapt to fit the soul placed in them." He raises his hand, brushes his fingers along the scar carved into his cheek. "What you expect to see is what you get."

And as his hand falls away he adjusts his scarf a little, fluffing it just so even though he knows it's covering anything questionable.

"We owed them. For getting us bodies, for giving us a chance. We were never meant to exist in that world, either so we couldn't just go off and live on our own. The only way we might be able to go home is if we died. But even Ichigo couldn't guarantee that, all he could say for certain was that our souls no longer existed in that world. Some people chose to let their souls be released, I can only hope they went home." He sighs a little, tugs the baseball cap he's wearing off and holds it out to Ardyn, the Foundation logo embroidered on the front.

"So now we work for them... low ranking agents. Canon fodder, really. But maybe with time we can make a difference. It's all we can hope for. The only option was to make a deal with the devil or let a bunch of kids die for a principal. Some of them as young as eleven."

Ardyn frowned sharply, out of disapproval at the general situation instead of Talcott specifically.

"Are you alright with that?" Whatever reason it was that led him to ask, it sounded entirely serious.

"Because if I make one phone call once I get back home, I can get Intergal's technology no questions asked. 3D printing, dimension hopping, the whole thing. Wouldn't be hard to get you and your friends a third option."

Why he was offering that practically offhand to someone he'd more or less just met was anyone's guess, but Ardyn looked and sounded genuinely sincere.

It's a serious offer, he can tell that much, so he does put some thought into it, one hand coming up to rest thoughtfully against his chin... and he doesn't even notice when 'thoughtful' turns into destructive but he starts chewing at his cuticles pretty quickly. Clearly a deeply ingrained habit judging from the wreckage of his fingertips.

"I don't know... a lot of us older kids wanted... we wanted to make a difference." And the world they'd been in was overrun with SCPs that were terrifying and dangerous. Like 106 and what had happened to poor Shiro. "But given the opportunity to freely travel between worlds I know a lot of them would want to go home."

Lance could go home, see his friends again, reconnect with Blue... maybe he'd even let Tal go with him still, see space and and help the other Paladins and maybe then he wouldn't screw everything up so much and there was so much he could learn. Not just cars and trucks and airships but space ships and maybe it wouldn't matter that he'd fucked everything up so much because he could do something useful and-

He blinks up at Ardyn, refocuses on what he's supposed to be talking about, not even noticing the shock that brought him back as blood slowly begins to surface along the side of his thumb. "I think a lot of the younger kids would rather go back... and some of them that have... purposes but it's... complicated."

"I don't think I'd want to go back to Eos, though. I miss Iris and everyone but... I can actually maybe change things back in Michigan, do something to help." going back to Eos would mean going back to being a useless kid again.

"Careful." It was a gentle admonishment, Ardyn looking through the Armiger for only a moment before coming up with a bandage he held out to Talcott. For all the curatives he had, he'd still kept a fair bit of the infirmary just in case.

"I just mean...look, it's really none of my business, but it sounds like you and the other kids were handed an unfair choice right out of a miserable situation. And maybe I'm sticking myself where I don't really belong, but I just don't like the idea of a group of children running around doing gods know what because they aren't allowed any other option. I'm not saying 'run off back home', just...you know, it's better to have the choice to do what you want with your life."

And weren't choice and free will just insane concepts.

"...Consider it my thanks. For...finding something no one else ever could."

Talcott just stares blankly at the offered bandaid for a long moment, confused. He reaches for it, takes it uncertainly and it isn't until he sees the bright smudge of blood on the paper wrapper that he even realizes he's bleeding.

"You're probably right." And for one crazy moment he just stares down at his thumb, fighting down the urge to keep going, keep peeling back the skin to make sure it's blood and flesh underneath, not stone. His breath comes out harsh and shaky, eyes squeezed shut for a moment.

His hands are shaking by the time he opens his eyes again, motions jerky and rough, wiping the blood away on his pants and ripping open the band-aid, wrapping it too tight, hiding the wound and whatever other godawful things might be underneath. "How many people do you know that had choices?"

Ardyn you didn't have a choice. They were all puppets of fate and story writers and- He shakes his head, trying to throw off the spiral of his thoughts, the voice in his head sounding too much like Sol for a moment there, rage and crashing stone.

"I'm sorry I'm-" Being negative, being too hard again, not looking at the bright side. Gods, what would Lance think of him, falling into the same old thought patterns so soon after finding himself somewhere new, somewhere away from the Foundation. "I didn't do anything to deserve your gratitude."

There, one thing he could be certain of that wasn't a byproduct of going crazy.

"Not many for quite a long while, truth be told. We spent a while thinking we were running from the network when it turned out they'd tracked us the whole time, so that was a fun little reminder that we didn't have control over anything. But once it was all over...we kind of had an abundance of choice to go where we wanted and live however we pleased."

A pause, Ardyn thinking that over before adding: "It was kind of strange, honestly. But in a good way."

He pulled his knees closer to his chest so he could lean his head on his arm, looking thoughtful for a minute before he addressed the second point.

"...You're the first person on Eos in two thousand years to ever have gone looking for proof that I existed, much less found it. Perhaps that's nothing to you, but it's...significant, to me."

Choice and free will were not things that were really Lucian values. Never mind what had happened in camp. It sounds like it would be very strange to suddenly have options opened up to be able to do anything.

If things are not dictated by fate and prophecy how do you know what to do? There's so much uncertainty in that. It was a large part of what had left him second guessing every action he took in camp.

"It wasn't me." So quick to shift the credit to someone else, someone more deserving. "I only knew to even start looking because of Ignis. It was his idea. I was really just his assistant."

He hadn't done anything noteworthy, of course, simply been there to support the important people that did.

"Yeah, well, too damn bad. I'm counting it for full and equal credit whether you like it or not."

...It was probably weird that the two thousand-year-old had just barely stopped short of 'because I said so', but it seemed there was no arguing with him.

Talcott is a little taken aback at that. He... wants to argue, to insist that he clearly didn't deserve the gratitude. That Ardyn should be thanking Ignis not him. But that tone definitely doesn't leave much room for argument. So he just nods a little, uncomfortable with the recognition but not sure how to explain that.

"Yes, sir."

"Ardyn." The correction came a little more gently, with a small half-smile. "I'm not a sage or a king or anything of the sort--there's no need to address me like that."

Why won't anyone let him address them properly?

"Maybe not any more but you're still-" He sighs, hand coming back up to his face, pausing because now his preferred spot to chew is covered in a bandaid, and then just scratching his fingers through his side burns. "Okay... I'll try."

Ardyn is still more important than him, older and influential and a million things Talcott is not.

"...Talcott, I'm a chocobo rancher with a husband and more kids than I know what to do with, I'm hardly remarkable these days outside of a highly specific fanbase."

Not technically wrong.

"I never did like standing on ceremony, anyway."

"Chocobos?" Soft and awestruck and knowing that they were all fictional didn't make it any less sad that chocobos were all but extinct in his world. "Really?"

Which was not the point he was trying to make but it was a better topic of conversation than Talcott's various issues with believing himself to be beneath pretty much everyone else in existence.

"Of course--a time traveler I know sort of owed me a favor and got my darling girl back from the old days. Then things just sort of snowballed a bit and, well. I have chocobos now."

A shrug, followed by a short pause.

"I...if you want to see, I have a camera with me."

"I'd really like that." He nods, pleased that he can at least see proof of real chocobos out there somewhere.

"Your girl? What's her name? Wait- I thought you said you went back to Tokyo? You don't have chocobos in Tokyo do you?!"

"You'd be surprised what you can hide with a little illusion magic." Ardyn waved a hand dismissively, a digital camera appearing in it--not as professional as Prompto's, but it got the job done. After a few seconds' searching he pulled up a picture--Ardyn himself visibly trying to hold back a laugh, while a beautiful black chocobo affectionately headbutted some scruffy loser who seemed entirely at a loss for how to react to this.

"Her name's Philomela. Didn't expect to ever see her again, but space and time are apparently negotiable these days."

Tal scoots a little closer so he can see without having to take the camera from Ardyn. He knows better than to touch someone's camera. She's beautiful and Tal actually gasps softly when he gets a good look at the picture.

"Oh she's black. I don't think I've ever seen one dyed black before. And she's so sleek and-" He stifles a soft laugh, something that's almost a giggle. "She's gorgeous."

A pause and then he glances back up to Ardyn. "And that... is that your husband?"

"She's not dyed at all." Ardyn smiled cheerfully, obviously eager for the opportunity to talk about one of his favorite things. "Once upon a time naturally black chocobos were quite common. They could still be found on rare occasions before the Night fell, but they were practically extinct after two millennia."

A brief pause as he tried to brush aside the state of the world for a moment. he didn't question how Talott knew that; likely he'd run into Izunia or someone at some point.

"...Yes. His name's Leonard Church--well, Lucis Caelum, now. Most people sill just call him by his original surname."

"It's so rare to see Chocobos now, at all, I can't imagine finding a black one." So rare... or maybe just impossible. With them so domesticated before the Night there weren't many that had survived.

"I didn't even know black happened naturally. That is..." He has the stupidest, happiest smile. "That's so cool."

"Church? He's not... actually religious or anything is he?" Please say no. He's not sure he can take any more preaching about The Lord, no matter what Lord that may be.

"Certainly does. Look--she's got larger wings than the common yellow chocobo. That's a trait shared among black-feathered ones; they can glide for far more substantial distances."

Clearly, he knew his stuff. The other remark got a slight laugh, followed by: "...Talcott, you really think I would marry someone who gave half a fuck about any god, goddess, or pantheon?"

No.

"He's fine. Hates Bahamut almost as much as I do, which is something you're likely to hear from most of my family."

He laughs as well, sheepish and embarrassed. "Okay fair. And I'm glad you've got a collection of people that hate Bahamut." Everyone should hate Bahamut. Why couldn't they be on of the Final Fantasies where they were just summons or whatever. Gods ugh.

"She seems a little larger in general. Or... is that just because I haven't seen one in person since I was a kid?" He was all of 8 the last time he actually shared space with a real live bird.

"Oh, plenty. I've got..." He paused for a second to count internally; Church, Junpei, Yuuri, Heart, Arianna- "...five? A Kingsglaive of five, plus one close friend that's not official unless she'd like to be. And then a good deal more back home. They get quite defensive of me particularly with regards to him, though Infernian knows where their blasted sense is for that much."

Ardyn shrugged, then scrutinized the camera for a moment.

"...Now that you mention it, I guess she is. Makes sense--had to be a giant godsdamned bird that could carry Gilgamesh, so maybe they were just larger before a couple thousand years of evolution."

"Is it weird that it's reassuring to know there are so many people out there that know the truth? Petty bastard." The last bit is muttered under his breath but is no less vehement for it. He's actually really glad the fans all hate Bahamut too but that's not something he can really... explain.

"All the predators were getting larger over the last -what?- century or so, with the Scourge becoming more prevalent again. It's entirely possible they got smaller to be more evasive. There aren't many things that could keep up with a wild bird. Coeurls mostly."

TEST DRIVE 006

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CW: minor self harm

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