TEST DRIVE

[ironwood]

TEST DRIVE MEME - TU SHANSHU EDITION!

Itching to try out writing a character? Then rev up your engines, grab your accounts, and slam your way into this meme! Here is a venue for you to try out whatever character there might be tickling your fancy, from fandom to OC, for as few as one and as many as MANY. Seriously, there's no limit.

How do you partake in this fantastic congregation of character testing? Why, by following these simple steps:

1. Comment with the journal of a character you want to test; put their name and canon in the subject line for added sparkles.
2. Tag around with everyone!
3. Profit like you live on a the back of a turtle!

But wait, there's more! For the low, low price of $9,999.99, you can even use one of our handy prompts when you tag someone. You could even pick one with a Random Number Generator to help decide which prompt to go with!

1. A Chance Meeting at the Turtle's Head.
   Remember, being here causes a great sense of-- well, shall we say inner peace.
2. Haggling Over Something in the Marketplace!
   Maybe someone else saw the exact same shiny thing you did at the exact same moment! However shall this be resolved? Remember: blood is extremely hard to scrub off of turtleshell!
3. Hey, I Just Met You, and This is Crazy...
   First impressions are always the most important, right?
4. WILDCARD!
   Go nuts. Suddenly your character is fighting dragons! Good God, they've found the Millennium Falcon drifting in the ocean! Do you really feel the need to polish every paving stone in the Earth Sector? Please note, Wildcard options are also what you can choose to do if you aren't yet comfortable in the Tu Shanshu setting and would prefer a more 'dear-mun' esque experience. Please specify in your post!

Comments

[anything_it_takes]

[Leo isn't afraid. He remembers his father talking about fear, how it clouded the mind, how there was no shame in the emotion but that he could not allow it to control him. Fear could be overcome. Sound lessons, wise lessons, teachings Leo has absorbed and practiced for years; so he's not afraid. Definitely not afraid. He's NOT afrai--

Shredder laughs.

Leo is very afraid.

But worse than simple fear is the fact that he's alone. There's no one to back him up, no one to order around, no one else to focus on guiding out of this situation - all the loci he uses to ground himself against his own doubts and fears are simply not here. Just Leo, by himself, against their most deadly enemy.

When that self-assured, sadistic laughter ripples through the air and the edges of Shredder's armor carve dark silhouettes against the light, Leo's knees waver and he stumbles backwards. His elbow hits the wall and he nearly fumbles his sword; clumsy with terror, it's a wonder he doesn't fall flat on his figurative tail (it's a close call).

He has to run NOW or he won't be able to get away at all.

Leo sheathes his blades, pulls out one of their home-made smoke bombs, dashes it against the ground and is immediately enveloped in a purple cloud. Darting away, he runs with every inch of his trained speed. If he can get a good distance between them, if he doesn't get cornered, he should be able to escape. Shredder has all that heavy armor, and while he's incredibly fast, he surely can't run the way Leo does...

Can he?]

[zaesha]

[ Now this is definitely interesting. That fear is consuming, pulsing, and Pitch isn't about to just let him get away. The smoke is a clever distraction, but only to those who could not move through it, those who could not asborb the surrounding darkness and pass through like only shadow can. Such fright indeed, so obviously Pitch follows after him.

He remains unseen himself, but he begins to create more shadows further ahead, the same helmet and mask stepping out of alleys and corners. Even further along, he reaches up and grasps the occasional street light, torch, whatever happens to light the way. If he has to surround the stranger in utter darkness to really get to him, he certainly will. ]

[anything_it_takes]

[Pitch is led on a chase worthy of the canniest fox with a pack of baying hounds on its tail. Leo is fast and inventive, and the mental and physical tools he has at his disposal have gotten him out of scrapes before. He turns to one after another, resting what confidence remains on the hope that the next one will work.

But as the shadows close in and nothing Leo tries can shake the pursuit in the slightest, he starts to feel desperate. If he was thinking rationally, he would realize this couldn't be his flesh-and-blood enemy - Shredder can't darken the lights, or pursue so closely without ever being fully seen, or start to corner him by appearing at opposite alleyways in a blink.

Unfortunately for rationality, the fear is a creature of its own now, worming its way into the weak points of his psychological defenses and spreading like a disease. Leo can't think beyond the mad dash to escape, and he knows that to make a stand is to hasten his demise; in his condition, Shredder will undoubtedly floor him in less than a minute. So Leo keeps running, far past the point when he should have conserved his energy for the inevitable fight.

As he tires, Leo instinctively thinks of going to ground. But he dares not lead the Shredder to a safe location or to family and he can't access the Keeliai sewers, so he slips into the canals. Surely this will shake his enemy, a human weighted down with heavy armor. But even the teenager's best swimming can't shake his pursuit, and Leonardo - a turtle for goodness' sake - is gasping for air by the time he abandons the effort, hauling himself over the lip of the bank with trembling arms and thudding heart. He scrambles onto dry land and turns before he's even stood up, eyes searching his surroundings; he's got to have made it this time -

But the lights dim, shadows close in and he hears the shink of blades. With a terrorized gasp Leo is back on his feet, expending the last of his energy in a now-hopeless rush to turn some new corner that will magically shake his enemy.

And then he finds himself in a dead end. Leo's throat is dry, his chest aches from the constant adrenalin spikes and trying to hold his breath past even his limits. His shell is against the wall: Leo is cornered. Even though fear calcifies his throat and drains the strength from his knees, the warrior refuses to die with his katana sheathed.

Leo draws his blades once again. His strength is shot, every nerve wound tight as a violin string as he nearly vibrates with terrorized anticipation of the first punishing strike. With his grip weakened by exhaustion he'll probably be disarmed in a matter of seconds, but he'll do everything he can to hold out.

All he can think of now is his brothers. When Shredder's through with Leonardo he'll hunt the rest of them down. Leo's the only one who seriously thought of this inevitability, the only one who truly prepared - Raph is over-confident with their new-found social acceptability and will be downright easy to hunt down, and Mikey - oh god, Mikey.

The darkness closes in.]

[zaesha]

[ It was quite the chase, that was for sure. The fighter was quick, nimble, agile. But he had obstacles in the way, other buildings and various evening life in this strange city. Pitch doesn't have to worry about such trouble, passing through wherever he pleased in order to have the most effective results. He wasn't about to let this one just run away so easily, not when there was so much to be gained from that fright just radiating off the other.

He followed, close, almost reaching the point he could breathe down the fighter's neck from a few short paces. But gone in the next moment, just enough for the ninja to garner suspicion and vanish the next. It was more fun that way.

Once the weapons are drawn, that's when things get interesting. Ready for a fight this one is, but Pitch isn't going to bother wasting too much effort too soon on this one. Once he has him cornered, the shadows expand, covering every last inch of the secluded alley and snuffing out every last shred of light. The laughing begins again, louder, almost to the point of deafening and even mixing in with a second voice - his own, merely for effect.

And then, nothing. The shadows withdraw and disappear all together, the laughter a fading echo. Mere moments pass, before it all suddenly seems as though nothing had ever been any different. Like it was all in the fighter's mind, perhaps. ]

Went on vacation! Now I'm back!

[anything_it_takes]

[Leonardo’s rational mind, struggling beneath cobwebs of fear, screams at him as darkness swallows the very ground beneath his feet - this isn’t right. Shredder is just a man - a master of the art, skilled, cruel and ruthless, terrifying in combat and probably a sociopath - but a human man. Not a mage, not a superhero, not a mutant of any stripe.

Unfortunately Tu Shanshu hasn’t been great for Leo’s rationality. When the second voice weaves into the laughter that scatters the teenager’s tattered composure like dry leaves, a treacherous thought fostered by paranoia sprouts and flourishes: What if Oruku got here and made allies who possess abilities Leo isn’t familiar with? What if some new ally or lackey controls shadows - or taught the Shredder how to do it himself?

Leo’s mouth is dry; his heartbeat pounds in his ears and it feels as though the heat is leeching from his body extremities-first (not a good thing for a half-reptile). Long past concealing his fear, blue eyes dart frantically as he searches the dark for any clue of an attack, any sign, anything solid he could possibly dodge or counter, something to work with, anything! But there’s just amorphous darkness and whispers behind his head, the ones he knows are there but when he turns it’s nothing.

Exhausted, terrorized, confused and alone, Leo’s skill is drowned by instinct. He knows a blow is coming, it must be. Leo flinches -

And then it’s gone. All of it. The alley is low-lit as normal, the only sound that of kedan nightlife issuing from a few streets away.

There’s a moment of frozen silence; then Leo gasps in shock and stumbles, half-falling and half-crumpling to the ground, braced on hands and knees. One katana escapes his grasp and clatters on the ground; the other remains grasped in his fist even now, but practically useless in the turtle’s current grip. He’s blowing like a racehorse; only part of that is the exertion of the chase. The rest is the aftermath of panic, shock draining warmth and feeling from his fingertips; he’s sick, shivery, trembling.

Why is he still alive? If the Shredder really had been here, Leo would no longer be in one piece, that’s for sure. Is someone messing with him, or is he just going crazy?

With a small groan, Leo leans back on his heels and presses his free hand to his eyes, trying to recover. After a moment he takes a steadying breath, retrieves his errant katana and braces the point in the ground to lever himself back on his feet.]

What was that...? [Leo mutters to himself.]