Test Drive #26

[godsoffortune]

TEST DRIVE # 26



Whether you're trying to figure out how your character would fare in this setting, trying to get some samples together, or just dipping your toes in the water, you've come to the right place! The Test Drive is here to make your life easy by letting you see what the game is like without actually joining it first. So here is how it works:

1: Post a starter with your character, including whether they are a god or shinki in the subject line.
2: Act like your character is established enough in the setting to allow your thread to go places.
3: Take on any god/shinki of your choosing, as long as they're not already in the game!
4: Comment around to the other people on the meme.
5: Have lots of fun!

To get you started, here are some ideas for thread-starters!
Feel free to come up with your own ideas if these don't strike your fancy, though.

Volatile Vagrant

Ayakashi generally have a particular method by which to hurt humans. But an ayakashi has appeared that seems to be completely random in its methods, and anyone merely being near it becomes a target of its malevolence in a variety of ways. Dispatch this vagrant ayakashi before it harms far too many people.

Warm Wanderlust

Hitchhiking in Japan is rare. A friendly but lost-looking foreigner on the side of the road will attract fascination, concern and compassion. But a Japanese person doing the same likely won’t attract the same positive attention. Yet here is one Japanese person praying for a way to experience the adventure of the hitchhike. What to do for your follower? Well, going as a group of three sounds good, doesn’t it? Just be sure to attract sufficient attention to yourselves so that the drivers will properly notice you!

X-Games X-out


The X-Games, popular overseas, has suddenly become a hot topic with Japanese competitors taking top spots in skateboarding events. Burning to follow in their wake, young teens have taken to the streets, parks and basically anywhere with a strip of pavement to hone their skateboarding skills (which may or may not exist in the first place). While it’s good to see kids getting away from the computer screen, they’re also becoming a public nuisance: damaging handrails, narrowly missing pedestrians, and making noise right up to sunset. Answer the prayers of the kids yearning for glory? Answer the prayers of those wishing for peace in their neighbourhoods again? (...What’s a ‘skateboard’ anyway?)


Youthful Yente

An enthusiastic grade-schooler has started a new career helping people find love! She's hooked up teachers, classmates' parents, even random strangers… but it seems like all the matches she's trying to make this month have gone horribly wrong! Is she being stalked by an ayakashi or is this just bad luck? Either way, she needs help getting her mojo back.


Zodiac Zenith

In the trendy Ginza area, a mall has set up an elaborate indoor display of lights set to represent the real night sky. The key feature is the evening illumination show, where the various zodiac constellations are lit up to music. Strangely, there are growing rumours that those who view the show become even more focused on their horoscopes (much to the benefit of local fortune tellers). It’s even said that people’s personalities shift to become more stereotypical to their respective signs. Take in the show for yourself and see what happens?




If you're uncertain about anything, feel free to check out the Premise, Rules, and FAQ posts. And don't hesitate to ask any questions you might have on the FAQ!
When and if you're ready to join the game, check out the Taken Characters before throwing in a Reserve and starting on your Application
Have fun!

Comments

fujiki yusaku | ygo VRAINS (god)

[vrains]

X-GAMES X-OUT

[ It turns out that if you can hoverboard in virtual reality, you can more or less skateboard in real life. He's hardly doing anything extreme, but he can glide around the park without hurting himself or anybody else just fine, and he can manage a few beginner's tricks without much difficulty — with a few "flashy but easy" stunts in his sleeve, there's an obvious solution here: he could teach these kids some entry level skills so they stop riding into poor pedestrians and busting up the local park. The kids will probably get tired of the fad before long, may as well just humor them until they give up of their own accord.

There's an obvious solution. But from the way that Yusaku's looking at his Far Shore compatriot, it seems he does not want to do it that way... mostly because he doesn't like talking to other people. ]

... No, I'm not going to teach them, I'm not — I'm not good at teaching stuff. I don't think it'd work. Why don't you teach them instead?

[ And, well, mostly he just doesn't like talking to other people. On that note: judging from the way he's holding his skateboard, he's probably going to make an attempt to literally ollie out of this conversation if he isn't stopped. ]

ZODIAC ZENITH

[ Fortunately, Yusaku doesn't even know what either his Eastern or his Western astrological signs are, which is definitely not because he lacks a canon birthday. As such, he remains completely oblivious to any subliminal messaging. He's pretty sure it must be the work of an ayakashi, so he's trying to keep his concentration on the mission and root out where it might be hiding, but at some point not even he can ignore how weird his companion is acting. ]

... Hey, get a grip. You don't seriously believe in this star sign stuff, do you?

HEAVEN'S BBS

FROM: (anon)
POSTED: 20XX-10-20 22:47:02

My name is PLAYMAKER.

I suppose not many of you are tech savvy. I advise that you not use the smartphones provided to us. They're a security risk. Unless you don't mind the fact that they're almost certainly trackable by whoever gave them to us. If you like convenience at the price of intrusion, that's a personal choice.

Also: this board is insecure.
You would be best assuming your "anonymous" posts are hardly masking your identity, if all you're doing is using the "post as anonymous" function. Same for private posts.
...
Though, to be honest, most of your private messages are more personally embarrassing than a security issue.

That's all the warnings from me.

[ And because he's a bit curious if there's anybody who's into coding or hacking like he is, he inserts here a chunk of encrypted text: complex enough that one almost certainly couldn't decrypt it just with pen and paper, but easy enough that a simple program could brute-force decrypt it. The decrypted message is literally just the first sentence of his post: "Hello, my name is PLAYMAKER." He figures if it's up anybody's alley, just seeing encrypted text should be enough to lure them in.

Also, he might unironically be behind 7 proxies right now. Paranoid? A little, it comes with the vocation. ]

x-games x-out (though i laughed super hard at the last one ngl)

[revolutionfalcon]

[Congratulations Yusaku, you may have unearthed a brand new level of unimpressed from your Far Shore compatriot. Or not. Shun's been extremely unimpressed about a lot of things since he got here, and people starting prayers without thinking about how they're going to finish them is just one of those things.

He still looks really, really unimpressed, though.]

Because you're the one who's been riling them up into wanting to learn it. So it's a bit late to start making excuses.

[Also, he's looking at that skateboard like he may well break it if Yusaku tries to literally or figuratively ollie out. Possibly while he's on it.]

[vrains]

[ Instincts honed by traumatic, high stakes card games immediately inform Yusaku that it'd be a bad, bad idea to try running away from his problems. Also: he has eyes and Shun isn't hiding his intent. ]

I'm not riling them up, you could easily do these tricks too. If you gave it a try, you might even end up better than me.

[ ... Then again, he doesn't get the nurturing vibe of a natural teacher off of Shun either, so he doesn't imagine either of them are enthusiastic about becoming an impromptu mentor. ]

... A compromise. [ One that doesn't make him happy, but he supposes that's just what compromises are. ] I teach you first. Then we teach the kids together.

[revolutionfalcon]

[At the suggestion that he try it, Shun gives a rather derisive glance over.]

I don't waste time with things like that. [That answer is almost immediate. Now if it was non-skateboard-related acrobatics, they'd be all well and good because Shun does those with a frankly unreasonable abundance. Apparently adding the board makes it less practical.

And as much as he doesn't like teaching people if the lessons don't involve fighting or dueling, that seems to be true of both of them, so after a moment of considering, Shun gives a somewhat exasperated sound and nods.]

Fine. It'd be better to keep it something simple anyway. [He doesn't really trust that the kids wouldn't hurt themselves with a more complicated maneuver as soon as they turned their backs anyway.]

[vrains]

[ Now that they've decided to mutually subject themselves to teaching kids, Yusaku puts the skateboard down again, gesturing vaguely for Shun to hop on. ]

Alright, so the easiest one for me is a kickturn... basically, you just get some momentum going, then you lean back to push the board up and...

[ More vague gestures, less useful this time — he's trying to communicate something of a halfway turn, but it's not particularly obvious. He's not sure how to explain this other than uhhhh stuff happens, but he realizes that's not actually useful... He wasn't lying about not being the best at teaching stuff, so it's probably good that they're dryrunning this. ]

[revolutionfalcon]

[While Shun follows the vague gestures with his eyes, he eventually ends up just looking back up to Yusaku's face with a slightly raised brow.]

You really are bad at this. [And Shun is exactly the kind of person to point that out with no consideration for politeness, a.k.a. that concept Shun isn't on speaking terms with.

Still, he tries to picture it based on what he seems to be trying to get at and what he's seen of the board moves so far.] So it's getting it moving and then shifting the balance to the back to turn the front.

[Give him some credit, he's reasonably good at figuring out matters of balance and movement even from unhelpful vague hand gestures.]

[vrains]

Yeah... I know.

[ Ah, to be so young and already so dead on the inside. He doesn't sound mad, annoyed, or sad to be called out, all he has is dry resignation to reality. But now that they're talking more specific points, he's ready to be somewhat more helpful: ]

... But yeah, basically. It's more about being able to counterbalance your own body movements than anything fancy with the board itself.

[revolutionfalcon]

[It's not as if Shun's unfamiliar with "dead on the inside", especially considering he's not much better when it comes to people insulting him (insulting people he cares about, though, is a wildly different story). It doesn't make for much of a learning environment, but he shrugs slightly and tests the motion on the board since he'd really rather get this done quickly.

Counterbalancing his own movements is something he's very familiar with doing, so he gets the motion on the first try, shifting his balance back and turning the board in one smooth motion before letting it drop again.]

Is that it? [Surely the other things have to be harder than this. Or maybe he's just had way too much time on his hands here to hone his already impressive acrobatic ability and control over his movements down to an art form.]

text ♔ from Apollo

[priforprince]

The public messages aren't much better.

[ Hibiki sees no reason to mask who she is. In fact, all the better if someone who knows what they're about is aware of her abilities, and her genius! She shall extend this sympathetic olive branch. Nay, laurel branch - it's more Apollo's idiom.

She'll have this encrypted text, meanwhile, unveil its secrets in a moment... ]

[vrains]

Can't disagree with you there.
I was hoping this board would be somewhat useful, but it looks mostly like a social media site...

1/2

[priforprince]

There's a dearth of useful information anywhere in this puniverse. Anything one wishes to accomplish must be done personally.

[ Her computer sets off a trumpet fanfare, meanwhile - it's done decrypting! - and Hibiki checks the result. ]

2/2

[priforprince]

[ The teacup sitting next to her cracks of its own accord. ]

[vrains]

So it seems.
I would have thought more people would be suspicious of what's going on here...
Nothing is ever attained for free.

[ And here he is, so woefully oblivious to the fact that it's already obvious he's the saddest of squares. He thought... his message was fine... ]

[priforprince]

[ There is a slight pause before this next message comes. The almighty and fearless god Apollo needed an aspirin. ]

Unfortunately, the entire system is arbitrary. A select few deities deserve the name, but the rest seem pulled from the rankest rabble.

[vrains]

Well, to be honest, I don't think I have a personality suited to being a god either.

... Anyway... one would think they'd pick people fitted to be deities to bring here. Or at the least, easy to manipulate into their roles.

[priforprince]

Malice would be preferable to incompetence.

[ It can at least be respected. The Far Shore, as far as Hibiki can tell.....

.....is just stupid. ]

zodiac

[blizzardrock]

[As a Scorpio, Fubuki is being distrustful and ~mysterious~ right now, so he just slides a glance at Yusaku.]

It isn't hurting anyone, is it? The opposite, in fact...people might get hurt because they ignored it.

[Why no, seriously considering reassignment to another god just because Scorpio is ruled by Mars or Pluto isn't weird or over-the-top at all, why do you ask?]

...What are you doing? [Just so you know, Yusaku, he won't turn a blind eye to sabotage.]

[vrains]

[ He's just going to strategically ignore that first part, because he has no idea how to react to that. Somehow he gets the feeling that if he explains that he doesn't believe in anything he can't quantify, this conversation is going to get seriously waylaid, so he'll concentrate on the other bit instead. ]

... I'm trying to work, you know... seeing if there are ayakashi doing this. Purging them if necessary. What are you doing?

[blizzardrock]

I'm investigating.

[He did notice the strategic ignore, but he's familiar enough with peoples' skepticism that it doesn't faze him, and he mentally glosses over it.]

It's definitely the work of ayakashi. [But he doesn't realize that it's affected his personality (and why would he? It's too close to notice), and so has become certain that an ayakashi will cause something at some point in the near near future.]

Purging requires two people, you know? Did you bring someone?