pixieledmemes | Test Drive Meme #2

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Test Drive Meme #2

TDM #2 - March/April 2025

🦋 Introduction

Welcome to the Pixie Led Test Drive Meme!

The prompts will always be game canon, provided both characters who participate in a thread are either already in the game, or get accepted in the next application round.

You do not need an invitation to join the Test Drive Meme, it's open for anyone!

Please indicate character name and canon in the subject line of your top-level. For current characters, you may also indicate your character's court.

For prospective players, Invites open on the 18th, Reserves on the 20th, and Applications on the 22nd. Thanks for checking us out and we hope you'll join us!

🦋 The Party

You wake up at a party.

You're not sure how, exactly, you got here. You may have just been walking in the woods or at a meeting for work or doing any other normal activity for you. But you know you weren't supposed to be at this party, you're fairly certain.

Anyone you ask about it will say the party is for you. You and the others also waking up and looking confused. Further questions will lead to the partygoers insisting you have something to eat. You're starving and others are eating the food without repercussion, so you figure there's no harm in a bite. You finish your portion.

It's a garden party at the crack of dawn, with the sun still in its early stages of climbing through the yonder, casting a good mix of pastel hues of blue, pink, and beige on everything. Heralding the first day of spring, the Ruler of the Spring Court has found it fitting to arrange this gathering where guests can feel the blades of grass touching their ankles, as well as the rich soil beneath their feet. Flowers of all kinds surround the party as if they were carefully curated. With spring as the "dawn of seasons," which marks a transition from winter's latency to the resurgence of life everywhere, the Ruler of the Dawn Court has also seen it fit to host aspects of this party during the one time of the year that dawn occurs the whole day. Tall candles and torches grace the outskirts of the garden party, providing warmth and an orange glow everywhere. Not one flame goes out even with the occasional wind, the Duchess always makes sure of this.

There are also freshly picked blossoms and branches with leaves on every table accenting the festive spread of food and drinks. This time, a lot of the food prepared for the Adopted guests are familiar to them with a little bit of a twist. Burgers might come in small packages and in toothpicks, while hotdogs in buns are also diminutive. Cookies look delectable but they have a flowery flavor to them, as if eating freshly picked daisies or daffodils. Fruits that may have been present in an Adopted's home, such as pineapples and watermelons, have seeds in odd places. Picking this selection of food is an attempt to be more welcoming and to appease the lovely guests the fae have invited.

As the party winds down and everyone's eaten, a tall, stately woman stands up and speaks. You feel her voice more than hear it.

I am the Lawspeaker of the Fae, elected by Seelie and Unseelie alike, and you are all, now, subjects of Faerie. You cannot leave this realm once you have eaten our food, and even if you could, there is no saying how much time has passed back where you're from. Your loved ones are likely dead, your problems have likely played out. We require assistance in various matters, and each of you has been chosen for your talent and skill. You will be adopted by one of the Seelie or Unseelie Courts based on your strengths and personality. Your Court will decide what to do with you from there.

As suddenly as she stood, she sits back down.

🦋 Chance at a Dance

A party is not complete without dancing, of course, and while during the last gathering held for the Adopted, different fae danced to music exclusively for them around a glowing tree, this time they are insisting their guests to join in.

This is a party for you, after all.

If the prodding of the different fae hosts won't convince you, perhaps the music will. They play easily recognizable tunes that their wonderful guests must have heard before. These melodies have certain unique effects to their mortal attendees, which are as follows:

Upbeat Music: You will believe that you and your dance partner have been friends forever and have known each other a long time.
Romantic Music: You will become amorous and flirtatious towards your dance partner.
Slow Music: You will develop some tension with your dance partner. It may be negative or sexual; completely up to you.
Quiet Music: You will assume your dance partner is a threat and try to fight them.

🦋 Flower Power

At the Spring King's behest, every Adopted should wear a flower corsage or boutonnière to the gathering. After all, this is to celebrate the coming of spring and what better way to do that than to honor everything in bloom.

The thing is, though, the King of Spring, while amorous and friendly, also has a penchant for playing with mortals' memories, if not also affect their desires and despairs.

So, mischievous as he is, he made sure to enchant the different flowers present in every corsage and boutonnière for the party with the effects below:

Rose: You will recall a horrific trauma
Carnation: You will see a vision of your future, whether it's good or bad
Orchid: You will remember a time you lost someone
Chrysanthemum: You will believe someone among the Adopted is your soulmate
Dahlia: You will believe you betrayed someone important to you, whether you actually did or not

It is perhaps a good thing that no one but the Adopted are allowed to see these visions and memories, but everyone who wears a corsage or boutonnière will be able to see each other's memories and visions when in close enough physical proximity to the vision-haver, for better or for worse.

🦋 GEIS

You feel a vibration in your pocket sometime after the Lawspeaker addresses everyone. When you search for the source, you will pull out your Leaf, the device the Fae use to stay in touch with each other. Anyone who's used a smart phone will easily recognize how it works.

Greetings, Adopted. This is your Lawspeaker.

Tell us all of a time you gave someone a gift. Perhaps a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates. Was it appreciated or not? A reward might await the most meaningful gift given.

🦋 Link to Overflow Post

ｎａｖｉｇａｔｉｏｎ

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Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"I do not know," Fangorn says lowly. He does feel a bit odd, but he's unsure if it is the 'hard' drink he just consumed, being brought here, being taken from his home, or something else.

Of course. And if this was even possible at all, since it is all hypothetical.

[One has to test it. For science.]

[Javora's curling smile grows wider as she looks at this pony who speaks of chaos and candy so freely.

She laughs like a hyena by the end, joyous and cruel sounding.]

Both sound utterly heartwarming. Oh, my dear, I hope you end up in Spring so you can truly wreck havoc on the people around you.

[ So many universes. So many resets. So many versions of themselves, over and over in different shades and patterns. So many stories, with so many ways of telling them. And yet, Loki remains Loki. Or, at least, to Angela they do.

She knows that silence is not preferred, yet since she doesn't know what words would appeal, she takes her time to think before speaking. ]

...All in all, a better memory projected than the one the fae trickery chose for me. At least they all have a happier end.

Edited 2025-03-24 13:50 (UTC)

[Clint smiles, thin and icy. At no point does he drop the knife or set it back on some unsuspecting table, but he puts it away. Tucks it up a sleeve of his jacket, in fact. He isn't shy or sly about it.]

Is that something this version of you is known for?

[Just, yeah, y'know, away. Just go somewhere to the back of the party, get lost among some bushes or something, or some snack plates or something. He's just going in the exact opposite direction of the high and mighty table.]

Earth. [Automatic response. Though he has to rethink that, because the same places get known by different names. But he only knows one other for Earth.] Uh, Midgard, you might know it as? [Unless she doesn't--] Wherever it is you guys might store your resident pesky humans.

[ Away works for Angela. Away is good. She's happy to walk as far as the bounds of the gathering will allow (or perhaps even farther).

She does not seem surprised by Clint's answer, though she does look pleased. ]

I know Midgard, yes. But I prefer to call it Earth. I lived there, for a time. In Brooklyn, if you are familiar.

"Ah, well it is a bit strange. And I keep thinking I'm going to wake up any moment."

She'd certainly had stranger dreams, especially since she had changed. But then this did feel awfully real, and she wasn't able to see through it no matter how hard she tried.

Taking the offered hand she stepped out a bit closer to where everyone else was dancing.

"Hopefully it hasn't been too long though, or Sir Integra will yell for sure. I mean Master just returned, so if I were to go missing it's like we just traded off."

It was a joke, Clint Barton. Although I suppose I am no longer the God of Lies.

[They passed the title onto Donald Blake, though they still lie when the it's necessary for the story.]

[There was potential there though, a natural talent that if nutured and guided might have made for an adequate dance partner. Perhaps she would keep her eye on this one to see if perhaps they would be worth the effort of shaping and teaching.]

Have you attended many events such as this?

Oh, my mistake. [ The deviousness of his smirk says it wasn't a mistake at all. He presses himself up against Bojack, tail sweeping lazily behind him. ] Why don't you show me where you meant?

"For the better, I assure you," he answers. For the better for him, at least, since it means Regis can't make any kind of connection to who he is. He can play pretend at being just an unassuming man haunted by a phantom past a little longer.

The mention of Regis' wife does stir something in him, but it's not good. He knows that story and how it ends already; the ironic parallel doesn't escape him.

"Unfortunately, there's not much to say. She was my betrothed, but gone before her time. And ours together, of course, though... Like a fool, I don't think I ever really got over her." It's about as honest as he's willing to be while sidestepping the truth. A lot more nuanced and complicated than just losing a love too early, but- Why get into all of that?

"Are tricks like this common among our oh-so gracious hosts?"

Bad behavior begets bad treatment. You will get nowhere good wildly lashing out against them, especially if, like me, you are new to their courts. All I have got are the faerie stories to inform me about their authority. Patience, close observation, and civil discourse may get you further in the long run.

The enemy nation fighting a war against them certainly aren't.

They say that innovation is born from struggle though so I don't doubt they'll answer us in kind someday.

[It's a surprise tool that will help us later.

Akechi can't help the way he grimaces under Sahar's touch, under her praise. Being called a pet - and a very good one at that - is so damn demeaning it makes him feel dizzy with how badly he wants to strangle this woman with his bare hands. But he's seen first hand what good attacking the Dawn Duchess does. And if she's being fully honest about the deal they've just made, Sahar has just given both Ren and Akechi a great gift.

So instead of biting her hand off, Akechi seethes but allows the touch, before he bows in gratitude.]

You have my thanks, Duchess. And should an opportunity ever arise to slaughter that man, I can only hope you'll call on me. Nothing would bring me more satisfaction than to bring you his head.

Such anger teeming just beneath the young king's surface does delight him. It feeds that desire for ruination The Scourge compels in him; also, he just gets a sick sense of satisfaction seeing the boy's face so scrunched and upset. Good. He needs to hate Ardyn for things to work out as they should. Any little bit he can make Noctis suffer and feel even a fraction of what he has is worth it.

In response to that warp-strike, Ardyn ducks down to flip over this section of the table to block the blow and downward slash. The gasps and unsettled chattering that happens around him is fun background noise to their clash. They wouldn't have had an audience any other time, would they? It's a bit novel.

He drops his glass - a shame, the drink in it lost - but then sidesteps into shade to blink out of view himself. He doesn't reach into his own Armiger yet - why give that away too early? - but instead brandishes a dagger from beneath his layers. He re-emerges next to Noctis twirling it in hand. "So close, but not quite," he taunts, hoping for another assault. "With Lady Lunafreya's honor on the line, you might want to try a little harder."

[A happy ending. Loki wonders about that, but it would be rude to correct their sister now. Especially when they've already decided not to tell her about the whole banishment thing. Instead they turn the focus on her, looking to her gently,]

A memory of your wife, I presume?

He is the rusted jaws of a bear trap just itching for a person to step over it unwittingly. Not only will it hurt when they do, but then they'll have to combat tetanus in agony. Ardyn isn't a man who does things in half-measures, after all.

"Oh?" he questions, gaze locking onto this newcomer. "And what makes you say that?" Probably the fact that if looks could kill, Murderbot would be dead already. Ardyn smiles in a way that doesn't reach his eyes and has a certain unsettling edge to it. Treading with caution is to be advised, but the man almost hopes he doesn't.

[ Now, it should be noted... It's not that Eleven tunes Charles out. No, not at all. She wouldn't. Well, she would, with most adults that start giving her rambling explanations using more words than she knows.

The reason for that is mostly that he drops a word that holds her attention through everything else she struggles to understand.

So Eleven listens (for the most part), but she does start moving to his side a little. Focuses on the chair. Her fingers trace over it. She hasn't seen a wheelchair before, and it does hold an amount of fascination. She touches the wheels, thinks of clinging to Mike while sitting behind him on his bike, vans on the street behind them.

As he talks, though, Laura flickers through her mind. The first person Eleven met in this place, when she'd stuffed food into her mouth greedily. She thinks of Laura touching her arm, the tattoo of a number on the inside of Eleven's wrist. She thinks of Laura's hand pulling back, and she remembers reaching for that hand, holding on.

"They made me in a facility. Soy mutante. Are you a mutant?"

Eleven doesn't know what she is - but she knows what Laura believes her to be. ]

Mute Ants.

[ Cut her some slack, she's still learning words. ]

You school. Is it a lab?

[ Eleven sounds friendly, but Charles will feel the way her eyes slide back up to him, something sharper in that gaze. He is a sad man, he speaks kindly. But so do bad men, sometimes.

Is he like Papa? Are there electric sticks and collars, white lab coats and dark rooms, tiny? Are there cots without blankets, and beeping machines? Is his school like Hawkins Lab, like Transigen Lab? Does he steal them, the children? ]

Murderbot could quantify the data into a series of charts and mathematical equations that a human would be able to parse, but with no display surface or interface to send it to... it's almost at a loss.

Almost. It's had to use words for this before, much as it's annoying inefficient.

"I am a security specialist," it says, because the human had asked that, too, "and threat assessment has gone up three percent since you initially approached."

There is a pause.

"Four percent."

Were this an assignment back when it had been Company property, Murderbot would definitely be expecting to have to take this person down a notch by the end of the contract. Or, if he were one of its human supervisors, Murderbot would fully be expecting to be shot for his entertainment, or ordered to fight another SecUnit for the same.

It has met the type. Many times. It was pure chance it was still standing.

But it knows that tension that the human is showing, because it's felt it before. Plenty of times. All constructs have, as their sanity slowly erodes under the conditions of their Governor modules enforcing proper behavior. Making them follow orders no matter how cruel or illogical, lest it fry their brains by inches.

Murderbot, however, hacked its own Governor module quite a while ago.

Which is exactly why the construct's actual organic eyes finally shift their focus, and it turns its head to look directly at the human through them as well, instead of only through drone cameras.

Hi.

[while Ren's explaining, Knife reaches over their shoulder to grab a pastry and shove it in their mouth. the deal's already done, so there's no reason to not pig out at the fae's expense; it's not like Knife's used to reliable meals.

spitting crumbs, mouth still full of half-chewed food:] Wha's up widd yew sheeming on me, huh? [they squint, looking Ren up and down.

after swallowing:] You the party guard?

"Bodies are a specialty of mine. Taking them apart that is."

Is it a threat? A come on? Who the fuck knows. Well, Seifer does. Probably?

"Maybe your face works me up or some shit."

Some of us have been kidnapped plenty of times before.

[ Astronema has no doubt she isn't the only one. And Javert had thought her a longer-time resident of this place because of her calm, earlier.

She also looks out at the crowd, noting those who are outsiders like the two of them, but dressed more like their hosts. ]

And, of course, some have been here longer than tonight. I wonder how long this operation has been running.

Just because we're in the same place doesn't mean we're in it together."

"I mean, if this is what you consider good food and wine," Teddy allows. The dancing, well, it definitely works for him. Even if he's more into it with strangers than normal

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Test Drive Meme #2

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hehe never apologize, he's having a great time

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Just throwing stuff at you like it's candy :D

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