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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Hank frowns. He doesn't know this girl, but something about what he's said has clearly resonated with her. He's not sure why, but he knows better than to discount something like that offhand. ]

I'm.. not sure. But I have to try.

[ He has to believe that the future can be changed. After all, if there's no way to change the future, what was the point in the Charles and Erik of the future sending Logan back? ]

( That's as good of an answer as she could have expected, she thinks. And she wants to ask, immediately, for him to do the same for her — to intervene. Except she isn't sure that he can. She doesn't know what he can do, whether he's the kind of man that could even save Logan from what will eventually kill him.

It lingers in her mind, too strong an impulse to shake. There should be time, though. Time for her to understand him more first. She'll ask him once she knows him better, if it seems possible.

She prods, gently, to get a feel: )

How will you do it?

[ That's the big question, isn't it? The vision doesn't say how Raven is going to die, or even when. So Hank doesn't have a whole lot to go off of.

He could lie, tell the girl some platitude to make her more comfortable. But frankly, the vision has Hank feeling unsettled enough that it doesn't occur to him to bend the truth, even in a kind way. ]

I don't know yet. But it has to be possible.

[ He pulls his glasses off with one hand and scrubs the other over his eyes, before sighing, wiping the glass on the hem of his robe, and replacing the glasses on his face. ]

I guess the first step would be getting out of this place, huh?

( Hm. Not a promising answer so far, but perhaps it is unfair to expect much from him. He only just learned of the loss. She remembers losing Logan, how hard it was to think that day and the days after — and she'd only known him a week, if that. It must be harder, even, for people who have known each other longer. If Erik or John were to die, for example—

She doesn't want to think about that.

Maybe she should stop making him think about it, too. It's difficult, when she wants to be impatient. But she can wait. )

Si. Erik has been trying to learn things. Others, too. Nobody has found a way yet.

( People have disappeared, but it's not quite the same thing. Fiyero is gone, and she will miss him, but she does not think he left on purpose.

There's something else she wants to ask, just to be sure, before she lets herself trust too much— )

Are you like us? ¿Eres un mutante?

( If he knows Logan, if he knows Erik, if he smells so strange, surely he must be — but she will feel foolish if she assumes and she turns out to be wrong. She hasn't met many of her own kind that weren't raised in the lab with her. She can count them on one hand. He would be the fifth. )

[ At first, Hank is surprised as to how or why she would know that he knows Erik, but then she asks him that question, and things start to make sense. ]

Oh, yes. Si. I'm a mutant.

[ As if only just now realizing the vast gap in their heights, with her as a tiny little thing and him as his usual beanpole self, he drops to a knee so they can more easily see each other eye to eye. ]

You're a mutant too? Are there... Are there many of us here?

( It is very thoughtful of him to take a knee — he's quite a tall man, and she is not so tall herself. Four feet of waifish, deceptively slight nothing. She's used to having to crane her head back to talk to adults, particularly taller ones. Most of them don't bother to kneel.

She doesn't smile, but there's something slightly lighter around her mouth, around her eyes, at the gesture.

The first question earns a slow nod. The second a soft; )

Not many. Only two, I think, but some people here are strange.

( They can do things, but they don't call themselves mutants. They aren't human, either. Kerym, for example, has purple skin and can do magic, but says she isn't a mutant. It's getting harder for Laura to understand where the line is drawn, save for when it's someone from the same world as her. That makes it a little easier.

Curiosity compels her to ask: )

What can you do?

[ Hank's gaze slips away, falling on the grassy ground nearby. He should have anticipated that she would ask about his mutation, even though it's not something really easily explained. Especially to someone new. ]

I can, uh... I'm extra strong, and tough. I can't really give a demonstration right here, with this many people around.

[ He's all too aware that the only doses of his serum in this reality are the remnants of what's already in his blood stream, and the one extra vial in his pocket. He'll have to face walking around in his mutated form eventually, but he'd rather not burn through the remaining time any faster than he has to. ]

I'll show you later, how about that?

( Strong and tough — like Logan, maybe? He doesn't look it, but she knows their kind at least well enough to know that looks don't matter. They mean nothing; abilities will manifest themselves however they want to. Not that she has a lot of exposure; before coming here, the only mutants she ever met were the ones that were made in a lab with her — and then Charles and Logan.

It's part of why she's so fascinated, so intent to meet him — she hasn't been in touch with mutant history, or with the wider population of them... ever. In her life. In fact, there are very few left in North America during her time, thanks to Transigen. It's nice to meet more.

Her answer is, eventually, a nod. Yes, this will be fine. She would like to see now, but they have time. Nobody knows how to leave yet, and not very many people have disappeared. So far as she knows, he will be here for more months alongside her.

She has other things she wants to ask — but it feels like she's talked too much in too short a space of time. She swallows down the impulse; what is your name, how do you know my father? It's too much, and she lapses instead into a shifting, momentarily restrained silence. )

[ He can tell she's a quiet one. He'd met a few shy kids like her, in the brief span of years that they could keep the school open. Mutant kids often have tough home lives, he knows. Even not knowing anything about her or where she came from, he's willing to be as patient with her as he has to be. ]

What's your name? [ He presses a hand to his own chest, and offers in broken, horribly-pronounced Spanish: ] Me llamo Hank. Hank McCoy.

( His attempt at Spanish earns him a small, faintly amused smile. She appreciates the gesture, and also it sounded terrible. She loved it, wonderful, he's very bad at it.

To encourage him, or perhaps humor him, she returns with: )

Mi llamo Laura.

( Just a hair more slowly than she'd normally say it. He seems nice, this man. She wonders- )

Erik says there was a school for mutants in his time. That it belonged to his friend.

( And Pyro said Logan was the art teacher. If this man smells like Logan, and knows Erik- )

Are you from there?

[ Hank hesitates, frowning. ]

There was a school. We had to close it for a while, but... I hope we can open it again soon.

[ Things were better when they had the school, when it wasn't just him and Charles. ]

( At this news, she seems to deflate a little. They had to close it — does it ever open again? She doesn't know. She does not think it exists when she's from, because there are almost no mutants left.

But it figures. She told Erik before — she doesn't believe true stories are happy. It doesn't surprise her the school does not have a happy ending.

But she says none of that, and only offers a distant: )

I hope so, too.

[ What neither of them know is that it will open again, sooner than Hank thinks, sometime in between their two respective points on the timeline. But, without that surety, all they have to hold onto is their own respective hope. ]

So, if you're a mutant... Does that mean you're from the future?

[ He kind of wants to ask if she knows Logan. Though, he's also hoping for her sake that she's not from the same future that Logan came back from. ]

( A good question — and a conclusion he found faster than Erik did. He must be smart. Maybe that's his power. She'll keep speculating until she figures it out, but at least she isn't outright asking.

She nods her head solemnly. )

Twenty-twenty-nine.

( A long, long time away from his present, probably, if Erik was anything to go by. Unfortunately, she can't answer much more than that — they didn't teach her very much about human history, let alone mutant history. You don't teach these things to property you want to control. )

[ He is smart. Whether that's a part of his mutation or just a natural development is something even Hank isn't entirely sure of.

His eyebrows raise slightly when she gives the year. ]

That... would put you over fifty years after me.

[ And a few years after Logan. Which brings up all kinds of questions that Hank is dying to ask. He's somewhat hesitant to ask about the future, but considering everything he's been trying to accomplish over the past few days, the burning desire to know whether they can pull it off or not is threatening to supersede his caution.

But maybe not right here, right now. ]

Are you hungry, Laura? I think I saw a tray going around with brownies.

( Ah yes, he is very smart. Achievement unlocked — her eyes light up, and when she nods, it's a fair bit livelier.

She's always hungry. That's the product of a super-charged metabolism: she's a bottomless pit of a girl, and she's always down to crush some brownies. )

Si, por favor.

( She has decided she likes him. For no particular reason. Brownies please. )

[ Hank wasn't a teacher for all that long, considering, but he did learn a thing or two from the experience. Namely: when in doubt, ply kids with food.

He stands again, raising up on his toes to better see over the heads of the rest of the crowd, until he can spot the winged and horned waitstaff fae carrying the tray of brownies. ]

Alright, there. [ He shoots a smile to Laura, and waves for her to follow him. ] Come on.

( He really is very tall, isn't he? With very long legs, at that. He waves her on, and she runs quickly after him — then reaches out to gently curl fingers around the sleeve of his bathrobe, to hang on so that she doesn't get separated in the crowd. There are a lot of smells here, a lot of people; it's easier this way than trying to parse his out of everyone else. She hasn't been around enough crowds to be very good at that yet. She'll learn with a little more practice.

The horned, winged waiter is slippery, moving through the throng of bodies with ease and grace, just out of reach — one could almost be forgiven for thinking they're purposefully being elusive just to make Hank's life a little more annoying. Is it coincidence, or are the Fae just assholes sometimes? Verdict unclear, but we're pretty sure it's the asshole thing. )

[ If she thinks he's tall now, wait until the serum wears off and he grows another couple of inches. But the height certainly helps in cases like these, where he has to track someone through a crowd. And it could always be worse, at least the person he's trying to follow has distinctive horns and wings that make them stand out from the crowd as well.

When he feels small fingers take hold of the hem of his sleeve, he glances down, offering Laura a smile of reassurance, and tries to manage his pace in chasing down the waiter so that he isn't dragging her along faster than she can follow.

But boy, that waiter sure doesn't want to be stopped, do they? ]

Um, excuse me? Mr.— Ms...? [ He can't actually tell this fae person's gender. Maybe they don't have one? ] Uh— Person with the brownies? Could you, maybe... Could we grab a couple?

( They sure don't, and soon enough they've been led on a merry goose chase all the way through to the outskirts of the party, on the fringes, near the wide expanse of grass that leads to the treeline. The strange thing is, despite not taking his eyes off of them, Hank will find between one blink and the next that the waiter is simply gone.

Until a tap on his shoulder from just behind, which startles even Laura into whipping around, her claws shooting out in her alarm, a spooked little smarl on her face — which promptly dies and turns into befuddlement as the waiter politely smiles and holds out a tray of brownies.

But- how did they-

Weren't they just-

She looks from Hank, to the waiter, to Hank again, and slowly retracts her claws — then tentatively reaches for an offered brownie. Because. Brownies are still important, even though she's confused. )

[ Hank barely has a chance to be bewildered by the sudden disappearance and reappearance of the fae waiter, when his attention is grabbed by something so, so very much more important. The immediate sense of danger as blades emerge from Laura's fists has Hank's eyes widening, and his arm pulling away from Laura. In a split second, his brain enters fight or flight mode, trying to assess what the threat is.

The sight is familiar, after Paris, but Logan's claws were made of bone, organic and animal. These claws are... surgical. Precise. Constructed with purpose and intent. (The intent to kill.)

He doesn't stop Laura from reaching for a brownie. She can help herself to the whole tray of brownies, for all Hank cares at this point. His mind is busy running calculations, trying to make sense of what he's just seen. Unfortunately, that does leave him staring slack-jawed at the young mutant. ]

( She takes, of course, the largest brownie on offer — and the only reason she doesn't take two is because the fae waiter sweeps the tray out from under her hand and pirouettes away, slinking off into the crowd. She frowns at him, but there's a more pressing issue at hand, which is stuffing chocolate into her face.

Hank's bewilderment goes completely unnoticed in favor of two or three too-big bites of a brownie with the enthusiasm only children have — and only then does she notice his look.

She pauses her chewing mid-bite and stares back.

What?

Slower Chew...

Even Slower Chew...

...Swallow. )

[ There is an AGGRESSIVE clearing of Hank's throat as he suddenly realizes he's been staring at this girl for the entire time it took her to eat this very large brownie. He looks away, feeling awkward, then finally speaks. ]

So, that's... I suppose that's your mutation?

(

)

( She looks at him. Looks down at her hands. Realizes what she just did, and that it must have scared him — she has not hidden what she can do; she whipped her claws out on poor unsuspecting strangers the night of her very first welcome party. But she can piece together that she may have mis stepped at some point in the last thirty seconds, so.

Instead of answering at first, she just shoves the rest of the brownie into her mouth in one bite, and then answers with her mouth too full to really be understood: )

Si. Pero- 'so 'eel.

( So there, problem solved. )

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