unfinishedooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #3

[OOC Note: Hello everyone! Apps will open next week on Friday, March 27th. We’re trying something a little different with this TDM! In order to showcase people who are looking to app, we ask that current characters not toplevel in the TDM. Threads do still count for AC proofs.]

Welcome to the Library

Those who are new awake in the stacks.

You’re not sure when you fell asleep, and the memories of the last things you were doing are hazy at best. But now you’re here, and all you can see is books in every direction, the bookshelves teetering high enough above you to reach to the sky.

A helpful sign points you in the direction of the main circulation desk, and even if you try to ignore it and go in any other direction, the desk is where you will find yourself. A figure sits behind the desk, not even looking up as they sort through books and other media; they look, to your character, to be the exact picture of what they expect a Librarian to be.

Trying to ask the Librarian a question will get them shushed, but they’ll point down a hallway to the side, leading to a kitchenette and what appears to be a dorm room, where they’ll find they’re not alone in this strange place. But once they’ve looked away, when they look back, the Librarian is gone.

The Tea Cart

Sometime after your arrival, you enter the lobby to find yourself greeted by what appears to be a little tea cart containing a carafe of moderately decent coffee, a pot of very strong tea, mismatched creamers and sugar packets, and scones as hard as rocks with surprisingly nice saucers and teacups. There is a sign next to them, stating:

Welcome Editors!
Please enjoy these complimentary refreshments.
Do NOT take food or drink into the stacks and please wash your hands BEFORE touching anything.

Looking around, you see that you and everyone else present have also been supplied with sticker name tags with “Hello, my name is _____.” Any attempts to rid yourself of the nametag will wind up with a replacement in short order, sometimes with a nickname or other title than before. They can be edited, at least, and there’s a little marker on the help desk for that purpose.

Do You Want To Make A T-Shirt

The Maker Space is always open, though it seems to be a bit picked over at the moment- one of those machines that lets you make custom logos and such for t-shirts is on display, but there’s very little of the iron-on vinyl left. If you want to make your own snazzy shirt, you’ll need to make do with the more wild colors- there’s no black or white, but there is hot pink and neon green. And glitter, of course. So much glitter.

Alternatively, feel free to grab some of the discarded ones- a few typos, a few cases where the machine snagged and messed up the print, and at least one that says “I stabbed a vampire in the face and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

Story - Moonlit Rivals

The city of Montica has been having some trouble lately, the normal tension between the resident vampire and werewolf populations now paused as they unite against a common enemy. Vampire clans who had been exiled are striking back, their aim to knock the current ruling clan out of power- but they care very little who gets hurt in the process.

There is chaos throughout the streets, as some of the rogue vampires have been using the sewer systems to set fires to the city. Given their own dislike of fire, most of the top-side vampires flee shortly after, though some at least maintain enough presence to try and take others with them, though someone is still going to need to put out these fires. Assuming you want there to still be a city after all of this.

[This prompt takes place during the end of our current Story! Replies to this prompt will not be considered canon, but feel free to play with them to get an idea of how a Story works.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Nabiki sighs.

"My name is Nabiki Tendo," she says, "and I met the woman I knew and... caught feelings for as Thorne Durante in a place a lot like this one, where beings called the Arcana threw us into other worlds the same way you've been tossed around. For 'Stories' say 'Jaunts,' call the people who stayed themselves 'Investigators' and those who got lost in a role 'Infiltrators.'"

She grimaces, hands out and palms up, a reconciliatory gesture.

"Thorne knew who I was before meeting me because she knew me as a character from a manga called Ranma 1/2 - I was the sister of the main character's fiancee," she admits. "So, trust me, that was shock, that's all. I know fictional characters have Agency because I'm one, in at least one other world, and if you know QC you'll know what it means that I picked up Adversary of Bargains powers on a Jaunt there."

Edited 2026-03-21 03:05 (UTC)

"... but by 'Thorne' Durante you mean Dr Durante herself?" Siobhan ask, trying to parse this out.

Mama Charley did use 'Thorne' as a name for herself for writing fanfic and other fandom things, like Hikaru is 'MrBlueskies.'

Edited 2026-03-21 03:58 (UTC)

"I don't actually think so?" she says. "As wild as this is to say, I think I actually ran into the Thorne Durante from the world your Dr. Durante saw through a glass darkly when she played a game about vampires. Because the one I met was definitely a vampire before picking up a human form on a Jaunt."

She sighs.

"...more to the point, more relevant to you, is that I also ran into a Deedee Yeowoo on the very last Jaunt, and I think she might have been a friend of yours. You wouldn't happen to be her Siobhan, would you?"

"Siobhan Greenwood, yes," she replies, still a little guarded.

"She spoke highly of you," Nabiki says. "Said that she would have been way more lost without your help, literally and figuratively. Kind of weird that there was no echo of you in Questing Country given Pezzotate, Aredhel the Alluring, Jules Cojuangco and Morgwn Taiyan, but I gathered she didn't know you that well at the time."

Any anything Deedee had to say about Sio being a native or not, she will not mention.

"Deedee is a good friend," she acknowledges. "And perhaps my Story echo was someone in the Waking World who was not yet a Dreamer?"

The chances of Sio or her echo being a robot in a Story/Jaunt are small but never zero.

"Could be," she allows. "The Synthetics were only recently a thing that could dream, and only the ones in the one space station, so could be there was some elf-shaped robot girl named... I don't know enough Elven to translate 'Greenwood' into Elven, but you probably get the idea, if you're Hikaru's friend."

Look. Just because the version of Nabiki from the anime managed to hook up with a single Ruth doesn't mean Nabiki lost the ability to savage people she read for filth.

Edited 2026-03-21 05:13 (UTC)

"He likes to translate his name into other languages, yeah," Siobhan says, slipping into a more player-like diction. She feels like this is the kind of woman she ought to be cautious around. "It's a clue to finding him if he's a character in a Story. You look for someone named after light or rice fields or blue skies."

Edited 2026-03-21 17:00 (UTC)

"Given my name got translated, accurately, into Christina Waverly for the one trip to a movie studio in the 1930's -" she wouldn't normally specify 19- if Deedee hadn't mentioned being from 2047 - "that tracks. Figuring out people's names in translation was a great way to tell if they were an Infiltration. Deedee was a Leah Daesongnova in Questing Country, while I understand your Ace Striker's earthside name is Taiyan Zhu, or Morgan to westerners. So her Troll - free Diabolin - self as the Haruspex of Rage was Morgan Taiyan."

She takes a deep breath.

"You said you were Infiltrating one story and Investigating the other?"

"We call it Reading and Acting," Siobhan says. "You're yourself for the first and someone else for the second."

“I getcha,” she says. “Please, Siobhan - can I call you Shaa? - tell me a bit about your last two Stories, just so I can get my bearings? Nothing personal or embarrasing, just the gist.”

"Most people do," she says. "And, hm. The first one we were all at a town in Britain where aliens kidnapped people to do therapy? Hikaru was a high school student who got kidnapped. He didn't look like he does now so I didn't figure out right away it was him, but I got there in the end. I was Reading, he was Acting, and his first name meant 'light' then.

"The second one had me Acting, him Reading, and I was werewolf Juliet to a friend's Romeo."

TEST DRIVE MEME #3

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