outofshadows | Test Drive Meme

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Test Drive Meme

Throne of Shadows
TEST DRIVE MEME!!!

New to Throne of Shadows? Long time player thinking of apping a new character? Welcome to our test drive meme! Experiment with active and potential muses! Here is a place where you can test out characters for the setting and accrue samples for your applications! Roll on the scenarios provided below, or come up with your own!

Scenario Builder

You are...

1. Lost in the temple
2. Trapped in a cloak room
3. Stargazing on a balcony
4. In the bathroom
5. In a bedroom
6. Swimming in a courtyard pool

You’re feeling...

1. Inexplicably happy
2. Like you could fall asleep at any moment
3. Angry enough to punch someone
4. Nostalgic or sentimental
5. Like someone stabbed you—oh, hey, they did, fancy that
6. Seriously horny. Must be something in the water.

Somewhat unusually...

1. You can only speak in rhyme
2. You are naked
3. You suddenly cannot verbally communicate
4. There’s a lot of alcohol/drugs here!
5. You are gender swapped
6. You have amnesia

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I already tried, but I'm not giving you my lockpicks. You'll probably bend them, and they were damn expensive."

Izumo was a ninja, after all. Of course he had lockpicks. And several small weapons, even though he was in civvies. Jeans and a faded T-shirt, ratty well-worn sneakers with rainbow laces. His dark head was uncovered, and as he gestured with the cigarette in hand the light glinted off the rings in his ears. Three on each side; two lobe and one cartilage.

"I'm something of an expert on getting in and out of places, and I couldn't get out. So we're stuck, for a bit, but given the number of coats in here and how none of them are the same, somebody's gotta open this door sooner or later, Joan."

Izumo frowned and tried her name again, adjusting the inflection. "Joan. Now that's a tricky one."

"If there were a lock on this side of the door I would have had it open already."

Izumo wasn't the only one that could get in and out of places he wasn't meant to be in. Picking locks was one of the early lessons at the Farm, and one that was actually used continually. Even outside of the field Joan had needed to make use of the skill.

"I was thinking of something a bit longer than lockpicks, though just as thin."

She wasn't as willing to wait for someone to open the door as he was. While she wasn't one to be entirely pessimistic, it was part of her philosophy that you always worked in a back-up plan. You always had nets in place just in case things went sideways. There was always a chance that someone wouldn't come open the door.

"Feel free to try out Mrs. Campbell if you'd prefer."

"Oooh, missus, hmm? Married, then?" Izumo returned, cheerfully. "And no, nothing longer than lockpicks." Well, a kunai, but he wasn't giving her the slender ninja knife. She'd probably try to do him some harm, as frosty as she was being.

If worst came to worst, he was pretty sure he could risk a blind translocation to outside, but those...didn't always end well. When a moving ninja and a piece of heavy furniture, or a wall, or a tree, tried to occupy the same space at the same time, guess which one ended up messily exploding? The ninja. Izumo liked life with all his organs internal, thanks.

He took another drag. Hmm, for commercially packed, these were good. Probably Marlboros.

"Yes."

He wasn't going to get more of an explanation than that. Her marriage wasn't something she really talked about with anyone, sometimes her own husband included.

With the necessary tools not at her immediately disposal, Joan left her search of the door and started looking around nearby for what she needed. If she had to resort to digging through coats again she would. Someone had to carry a pocket knife, right?

"Not happily, then, I see," Izumo decided, gauging her tone. He watched her dim shadow move about, never moving from where he leaned on the wall. "And a do-er. Can't be still, hmm, Joan."

It amused him to watch people and pick them apart. As she was his sole companion for the conceivable future, he might as well try to find out what made her tick. It wasn't like any other entertainment options were throwing themselves his way.

"Yes, happily. I am simply not happy right now."

It was only a partial lie. Sort of. Sometimes she was very happy in her marriage. Unfortunately lies, secrets, and suspicions had plagued the union from the start and weren't likely to end any time soon.

"I can, if necessary, but I would prefer not to leave my fate up to someone opening a door if I can do something about it. You could try to be helpful as well."

"Lie to me if you like. I don't care."

Izumo shrugged. She wasn't being very interesting. Too bad, so sad.

"I was helpful. Unlike you, I can recognize when I'm simply wasting energy. Come sit down, busybody, and I'll teach you a drinking game."

Joan turned slightly and lifted an eyebrow at him in silent query. Lie to him? No. She wasn't lying to him. At least not to the extent that she would consider a lie.

"If you were so worried about wasting energy you wouldn't be running your mouth. And I know plenty of drinking games, thank you."

Izumo said, "Well, then, come play one with me."

He was bored. Her trying to get out after he had already done so? Both boring and pointless. So they should do something interesting, obviously. Drinking games were one, since she'd turned down sex. Izumo had his dice, but no cards. He doubted she'd gamble, anyway, and what did they have to bet? cigarettes and pocket lint? Hell, she hadn't wanted the cigarettes earlier; he was keeping those.

"You don't have anything I would want to drink, and I wouldn't trust anything you find in some random coat pocket unless it was sealed."

Once a spy, always a spy. Just the thought of the number of ways someone could poison an unattended container of alcohol could have her going on for hours. Even someone not as distrustful as Joan would have to admit that the risk was rather high.

"It's not poisoned," Izumo answered, calmly. Or if it was, it was a minor one he was immune to. But it didn't taste poisoned. Besides, who would bother to drug a bottle of alcohol carried in an inner coat pocket? Not somebody whose coat had smelled faintly of alcohol fumes and cigar smoke. "Not a whiskey fan, baby?"

He took another long drag of the cigarette, at his ease.

Joan let that one go. She'd long ago learned to pick her battles, and this one wasn't worth fighting. In fact, she suspected that if she pushed the issue he would only make it a point to technically obey her request only to come up with another similar name that she hadn't already banned. It just wasn't worth it.

"No, I'm not."

She would much rather have her wine, thank you.

"Suit yourself. I'm trying very hard to be pleasant company, you know. You could do a little trying yourself."

Izumo shook his cigarette at her. "It'll make the wait easier." He was damn tired of her sourpuss attitude.

"I'm trying to get us out instead of waiting around for a rescue we can't be sure is coming."

She'd still been searching through pockets during Izumo's attempts to draw her into a game, and the next pocket she went into revealed something useful. The pocketknife she'd been looking for. Satisfied, she flipped it open. While the blade was a little on the small side, it would hopefully do the trick.

"Personally I believe the wait would be easier in silence."

"Daaaaaamn. Cold. Are you always this passive-aggressive unfriendly, or am I just lucky today?" Izumo queried, watching her shadow move in the dim glow cast by the cigarette. He tapped another out of the carton, and lit it from the end of his nearly-burnt-out-one.

He did not, in fact, smoke on a regular basis. But he'd spent enough time in the company of smokers to do a very good job of chainsmoking. He ground the butt out on the wall, pocketed it, and went back to his fresh cancer stick.

"I don't have time to waste for idiots and fools, so yes, I am."

Honestly Joan rarely had time to waste for agents that weren't idiots or fools. Time was always a limited quantity and sinister plots seemed more never ending, especially of late.

She returned to the door and slipped the blade into the crack, sliding it up toward the corner. Before she could get quite to the top the blade stopped. It was what she'd been hoping to find, the location of what was causing the door to refuse to open.

"Hm."

"Ouch. How you wound me." But Izumo chuckled immediately after, robbing the plaintive tone of any truth. "I get the feeling you're not really a very happy person, are you, Joan?"

Speculation, but based on words, turn of phrase, the way she moved. Part of Izumo's job had always been intelligence, spying and blackmail. He learned people, and he listened to them, and he took them apart to find out what made them tick and what would be the best leverage. It wasn't malicious; by now it was just what he did, so used to working he never really stopped.

Joan cast Izumo a small smile over her shoulder. On the surface that's all it was, but hidden not very far down was a hint of threat. Anyone with good instincts would recognize it for what it was.

"I have my moments."

She waved a hand toward the door.

"Now come over her and see what you think."

"I think the door is damn stuck and nothing we do is going to help," Izumo answered, before he pushed away from the wall and slipped up into her personal space as if he belonged there, tapping on the door with a knuckle. He tipped his head to look up at her, smiling pleasantly.

"It feels like there is a very large piece of furniture up against the door and while I have many many talents, Joan, moving that is not one of them."

Joan ignored the intrusion and focused on the point where her confiscated pocket knife had been stopped.

"There's also something wedged in the top here. We a trapped in a closet. Closet doors open inward. And, if for some reason this one didn't follow conventional building rules, a piece of furniture would not be in front of a closet door unless it was placed their purposefully to keep someone in or if the closet wasn't used."

Both things would punch a bit of a hole in Izumo's plan of waiting out a rescue. Joan still believed it was safer to assume they were on their own.

"This door does not open inward - the hinges are on the outside, and it's on the wrong side of the jamb to swing in," Izumo pointed out, patiently. "It opens out. Position of furniture could mean we're deliberately trapped, or it could mean someone decided to rearrange furniture, or that someone went crazy and decided to make sure the boogeyman stayed in the closet tonight. I'm figuring on the second, as this is a recently-used coat closet and none of the coats are the same. There are no shoes, which leads me to believe this is a public building of some sort, and all these coats are very fine, which reinforces that idea. Eventually, someone is going to want their coat back on their way home, and then we will be released."

He took a deep breath, and blew out a stream of smoke with it. "Does that logic satisfy you, Joan?" He brushed a knuckle against the top of her shoulder, close enough to kiss as he tipped his head to face her.

Joan very gently picked his finger up with two of hers like it was something disgusting she didn't want to touch and dropped his hand off her shoulder. She was willing to tolerate his closeness, but she was not going to tolerate his hand on her bare skin. When she looked at him again her eyes were narrowed dangerously.

"What are you talking about? The hinges are right there."

She turned to point toward the right side of the door and froze. There were no hinges like there had been only a moment ago. As a matter of fact, the entire door was different. This one was a different color, still not fully identifiable in the dull light but darker than it had been, and had engravings etched across the surface. Joan was pretty sure it wasn't made of wood like the other had been either.

"That's... not the same door."

What the hell was going on? Had she been drugged somehow? Had the entire room been drugged with some kind of air based hallucinogenic and she hadn't noticed?

Izumo stared at the door. He pulled his cigarette from his lips and and began to curse, with great variety and creativity. That was just fucking with them and he did not appreciate that.

Still holding his cigarette beteen first and middle finger, he clasped his hands together and pulsed his chakra.

"Kai!"

Nothing changed. So it wasn't an illusion, then. Just to be sure, as he raised his cigarette back to his lips, Izumo bit himself to the blood on the inside of his cheek The pain was sharp, real, and still nothing changed. .

"Gods damn this all to fuckin' hell," he spat, and kicked the door hard, with chakra behind it: a normal door might have bowed out or even broken under the assault. This one did nothing and Izumo growled wordlessly at it.

Joan simply eyed him at the sudden burst of expletives. She'd heard them all before, and worse, but wasn't one to express herself that way very often. It required a very special situation, and this, as weird as it was, didn't qualify. Instead she crossed her arms lightly over her chest and watched him.

"Are you done with your temper tantrum now?"

At the continued swearing and sudden kick at the door she figured he wasn't. She shook her head in exasperation, but then froze. What had that click been?

"Izumo." Sharp, solid, and enough to get his attention and tell him she's serious. "Did you hear a click?"

"I heard it," Izumo answered, warily. He'd heard it and now he slunk back from the door, tense and with his weight balanced low, ready to fight or flee...whatever was called for in a moment's notice.

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