tushanshu_ooc | Test Drive Meme

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Test Drive Meme | March 2014

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:

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

A Chance Meeting at the Turtle's Head.
Remember, being here causes a great sense of-- well, shall we say inner peace.
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!
Have Met Before? Because I Could've Sworn I've Seen You In My Dreams.
Have you wandered into the realm of Dreaming via an archway in Keeliai? Here, everything is shaped to your character's individual mind. Dreams can be shared between characters and will result in a meshing of minds. These dreams can be positive or negative, depending on your character.
Dramatic Chase Sequence!
You're running away from something! It could be anything, from a rampaging kirin to a gaggle of overly enthusiastic children, or even one of the newest editions to Keeliai's menagerie, an incredibly affectionate turtle the size of a minivan! One way or another, you can't stop, and much like a katamari ball, you feel obligated to grab everyone in your path along the way to keep them out of danger! Or perhaps you're more the sort to try and knock them into it as a distraction...?
Spring Fling!
Apparently the kedan take the "starting anew" aspect of spring very seriously and have started showing their appreciation for flowers and lovely weather by kissing everyone they across! Neither age nor gender seem to play a factor (though the children will instead get kisses atop their heads, because they're not that weird) but you might find yourself liplocked with a random stranger just for walking down the street.
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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is the first time in twenty years that Joel has seen urban civilisation. Civilisation, that is, that isn't overrun by martial law, isn't secured into quarantine zones, isn't surrounded by militia, by the constant threat of Hunters, by decayed ruin and despair. By Infected.

He doesn't trust any of it. As he's walking through the crowded market place, stepping out of people's way here, squeezing through clusters of crowds there, he keeps glancing over his shoulder in paranoia. A few times, he's stopped by a haggler, which he's quick to shove out of his way, hand itching to whip his gun out at the slightest sense of alarm.

It's almost all too much. Too overwhelming. Too much noise, too many smells, too much stimulation. He's grown so used to the dead silence of a world torn apart by chaos and sickness and terror that a thriving civilisation like the one he's wandering lost through is completely foreign to him now.

As he's pushing past another small bottleneck of people, he catches a snippet of conversation in amongst the throng of noise. A familiar voice; female, tough, no bullshit. He glances in direction it's coming from - and finds himself looking at a woman he recognises only all too well stepping away from a stall into the crowd.

It can't be. It fucking can't be.

Realising he's come to a stock still, he starts forward again, this time shoving past people, muscling his way through the crowd, a look of incredulous apprehension on his weather-beaten face as he keeps his gaze fixed on the back of the woman's head over the top of the crowd.

As he catches up with her, he reaches out to grab her arm.

Tess has gotten used to it - well, at least outwardly. Used to the crowds, used to being alive when she should be dead. Used to being here without Joel, for the first time in years.

So it's hardly surprising, when she feels a hand close around her arm, that she whips around, ready to yank whoever just grabbed her off their feet, her long-cultivated instincts coming to the fore.

"Hey, buddy, watch who you're -"

Her anger dies with the words on her lips, and her eyes go wide in surprise at the sudden sight of him here, like some kind of goddamn miracle. As if her being here isn't already one.

"Joel," she breathes out, and then punches him in the arm. "It took you goddamn long enough!"

For just a moment, everything around him fades into the background as the woman reels around on him. "Shit," comes Joel's quiet and stunned exclamation. "Tess."

He lets go of her arm and takes a half-step backwards, looking her up and down like he might be looking at a ghost. He notices the blue streak in her hair and he notices how she no longer looks like a woman surviving only on rations.

And then, she's punching his arm, and not even that shakes him out of his numb stupor, not straight away, although it does make him take another half-step backwards. She looks so different, different to how he last remembers seeing her.

"How the hell are you--?"

Alive, he almost finishes, but shit, he don't like thinking about that, sure as hell don't like thinking about the sounds of gunfire that had gone off in the Capitol building--

"Alive?" She finishes it for him, not willing to beat around the bush, not when he's here, fucking finally.

"Hell if I know, Texas, we're all just the playing pieces here. Christ, Ellie's gonna be beside herself. Do you have any idea how long we've been sittin' around here waiting for your sorry ass to show up?"

Her voice is a mix of lighthearted dismissal, tinged with a hint of underlying anger, and maybe something else, too. Maybe some deep-buried worry that this is a dream, and he'll disappear again, and if she takes it too seriously, it'll be over and she'll never see him again.

If she treats it flippantly enough, maybe she can will the nightmares away.

Alive. Yeah. It's one thing to think that word; it's a whole other thing to hear it. From Tess' mouth, no less. And, shit, something twisting and despairingly ugly starts to rise inside him, which he's quick to clamp down on and push back down to cold nothingness.

Treat it like it's nothing. Like it never happened. Just like the way he told Ellie to never speak of Tess again after they left the Capitol building. It's only way to keep going, keep fighting, surviving, without letting the past drown him.

The mention of Ellie catches his attention. The expression on his face changes; he takes a step closer to Tess, a hand coming up as if to pause her for a second, as if he hasn't quite properly heard what she's said and he urgently needs her to repeat it slowly.

"Wait - you sayin' that Ellie's here?"

Edited 2014-03-31 12:41 (UTC)

"We've been here for months, Joel. She's been here even longer than me. Time works funny here." Tess shrugs, grimacing at the inadequacy of her explanation. She knows how little sense it makes, she knows that chance are Joel just saw Ellie hours or even minutes ago, as far as he's concerned.

But the fact remains, and Tess is far from the sort of woman to beat around the bush with things like that.

And she hasn't even mentioned Sarah yet. She won't - not until she can get him alone, sitting down, prepare him somehow.

"I know it doesn't make any fucking sense," she points out uselessly.

For a second or two, Joel just watches Tess with complete skepticism. Someone pushing past him brings him back to the present: standing in a marketplace, surrounded by people, talking to fucking Tess, as though all that messed up bullshit back at the Capitol building hadn't happened, as though she hadn't been bit.

Eyes cutting away, he throws a glance around him. He's still on edge. Still ready to whip his gun out if anyone makes any sudden moves. When he turns back to Tess, he's shaking his head.

"That don't make any fuckin' sense," he agrees challengingly. "Where the hell is she?"

Tess sighs, and jerks her head vaguely in the direction of a quieter street - basically the edge of the market and the beginning of residential areas.

"C'mon, she's not far from here. Wood Sector. She lives in a treehouse, you can imagine how much fun she has with that."

She tries for a smile, but it doesn't quite work out as she leads him away from the worst of the crowds. "There's a lot to tell you. We're gonna need some privacy."

A treehouse? Well, Joel can just imagine how stoked she'd be by that, though that hardly seems at all important to him right now. He just wants to see her. Make sure she's alright, ask questions later. And he's got a million of those.

"No shit," comes his tired reply. No shit there's a lot to tell him, and as he falls into step behind her, he finds himself gazing at the back of her, dumbfounded by the fact that she's alive.

This has gotta be some kind of messed up dream, right? Maybe he's concussed from those fucking Fireflies knocking him unconscious. Whatever the hell's happened, he sure ain't in Kansas anymore.

"Well, how about you start by tellin' me where the hell we are."

"You should've already got the low-down from the kedan," Tess says quietly. "Realm between life, death and dreaming? Not that that means a goddamn thing. But we're on the back of - I shit you not - a giant turtle. And I'm not the only dead woman walking, here, either. Not everyone is, but some of us are."

He steps out of someone's way, pushes past another, and catches up with Tess, now walking beside her. What she tells him, about this 'realm', makes about as much sense as what he'd been told when he was pulled out of the tub of water.

He cuts a sidelong glance at her about the turtle, though. And perhaps the part about the dead walking amongst the living ought not to seem so unreal, given he's walking besides Tess, but--

"I'm s'posed to believe that?"

She grabs his arm, tugging him down an alley - deserted. She doesn't want to do this in public - but if grabbing his arm, being physically here isn't enough, then maybe he should see for himself.

She tugs her shirt back, the way she did in Boston, but instead of an ugly bite on her shoulder, there's - nothing. Not even a scar, the skin unblemished, like it never happened.

There's a protest on the tip of his tongue as Tess suddenly grabs his arm - which dies the moment he registers that she's got hold of him, that she's solid, warm, real. And so, he lets her pull him down the alleyway and the moment she turns to him, reaches up to her shirt, yanks the collar away for him to see her neck--

He stares at it, then at her, then back at her neck again. He lifts his hands and goes to reach for her face, to tilt her head to side, examine the her neck - and stops himself just in time. Balling his hands into a fist, he makes himself drop his arms back to his sides as he takes a step backwards, as though it's hit him all over again like a sledgehammer to the chest that she's actually here in front of him. Alive. Breathing.

"Jesus, Tess--"

"They can bring in anyone," she says with a frown. "I don't know how. God knows I don't - " Know why they would bring me of all people.

"The point is, I've been here, lookin' after your girls for you so you'd better get it together here, Joel. Because you're gonna need to be strong."

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Test Drive Meme | March 2014

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