spellgrinders | ( TDM

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( TDM | #6 )

TDMs can be used for anyone interested in the game and/or testing out a new muse.

Test Drive samples are encouraged to be used for your application sample, though they are NOT a requirement.

Feel free to use one prompt, multiple prompts or make up your own!

These threads can be considered game canon upon game opening if you so choose.

Telepathy and magic can be used at any point in time on the TDM, from Prompt A to your wildcard prompt. A specific prompt exists, however, that makes sure all characters have an equal chance to use this mechanic within the TDM. You're encouraged to have characters use telepathy and their magic accidentally or even purposefully on any TDM prompt.

If you aren't set on your character's power yet or want to try out a few, you're still able to use the test drive. Maybe your character is a late bloomer and hasn't fully unlocked their intuitive drive yet. In the case of multiple powers, only prompts that contain the power you choose for your application will count as potential game canon threads.

While only one character can be apped or reserved during a cycle, feel free to post with more than one character if you like! This is for those who are uncertain of their first choice or who would like to try out different characters within the setting.

IMPORTANT: This world is low-frequency. No canon powers or abilities are allowed! Also check out the setting information for more info about what the hub island looks like and what can be found there.

ou blink and that's all it takes. At first, the picture doesn't come in clear, like you're waiting for a screen to fully load -- more aptly, it's like you're waiting for a camera to focus so you can find image clarity. Before you happened to rapidly close your eyes and open them, your life was normal...well, normal for you, anyway. Fighting an alien, making a quesadilla, dying. And then that blurry picture suddenly takes over.

There's a lot to take in here -- you feel weird, your surroundings are weird. Everything is just weird. For starters, there's that new piece of jewelery inserted in the space above your chest. That certainly wasn't there before you opened your eyes.

scanner pod

Here's the part where they finally locate something of use: the base camp. The murky, weathered location is a little distressed, and resource gathering is making coven members sparse. However, that doesn't mean helpful answers aren't only a step away.

GAME NAVIGATION

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[ first of all, the dust (or dirt) damage really isn't that bad — but that's really besides the question.

He's only ever really seen the other face to face less than a handful of times, but there's no way that he'd forget the voice, however curt gaelio's response was this time. Mika lowers the hand offered, but keeps his gaze fixed on the other's face — there's no hostility just yet, but there is surprise, maybe, curiosity of some sort.

It doesn't escape his attention that gaelio is currently armed in counterpoint to his ... well, the state that he is in thanks to his newfound powers. But even with his arm in a rough sling, Mika is quick and fast, if anything happens. ]

It's you.

[ a pause, and Mika blinks once, carefully tilting his head to one side. ]

Gali-Gali?

[ it was on the ground now it's in his hand, ok. no offense to that hand, not anymore.

The lack of reaction throws Gaelio further. Not a total lack, but what Mikazuki does show contrasts with what Gaelio last remembers. Even years before, Gaelio's impression of the boy keeps colored with that first aggression. However muted he'd become once reprimanded, Gaelio retained less of that. More of conflict, and every altercation that followed.

Not that there had been much more inflection, emotion, from Mikazuki during any of it.

In any case. Can I kill him to mild recognition, it's jarring.

A sense of disconnect.

But, that recognition... two years of another name, his own only recently reclaimed, yet reflex kicks up through the dust and ash. ]

Gaelio.

[ but without much passion, without the surname. ]

Yeah. Mikazuki Augus.

[ Spend two years obsessed with that man and Tekkadan, pick up more than space rat.

If that man's theory of Fate holds past Julieta, then...

...

Gaelio stoops, unable to relax or loosen his hold on the gun, but himself scooping up a handful of dates and holding them out. ]

Welcome.

[ a gesture of something maybe close to a truce. even with their past encounters having been less than ideal, there's no reason for mika to lash out or show any sort of hostility to the man right now.

nevertheless, mika follows the other's movement carefully, but doesn't step back when the handful of the dates is offered. ]

I thought you died.

[ not that Mika was a witness to that, but news travelled. ]

[ It might be his own fault that he's left with his hand out, filled with dates. He could see well enough that Mikazuki had one hand full and his other restricted by the sling.

His fault or not, he does not yet retract his hand. For his own sake, it's handy he's become so impervious to self-consciousness.

This next round of surprise strikes more mild. Gaelio might have little expertise in physics, especially the sort concerned with time and space anomalies. It might remain unsettled in the coven, whether time passes in their worlds, how and when Qri takes. But he can connect dots, hypothesize.

They ought to have crossed blades, Ein guiding his limbs, almost two months ago. Julieta had not known his absence, instead taken from roughly the same time after he knew a month. Time frozen, a theory now threatened. But unless Gaelio had died again... confusion furrows in his brow, clears.

The answer's simple enough. Blandly said. ]

I did. Did you watch? The burial was lovely.

[ The procession to and ceremony at the Seven Stars' cemetery televised, the recording played by Rustal.It's our advantage, and the mask. Almiria weeping in his arms. How frequently he'd watch them entomb his ashes in those early months.

How frequently he forgets they were not his, not really. ]

Edited (cemetary) 2017-11-21 06:40 (UTC)

No.

[ Spoken with no pomp or ceremony; there's a lot of things he still doesn't understand about funerals, not that he paid any particular mind to them.

Mika moves to deposit the handful of dates in his own hand to the pockets of his oversized coat. Thus freeing his hand, Mika turns his attentions back to the other, tilting his head slightly to scrutinise Gaelio carefully.

He understands that it's just something people recognise as being necessary. A sending-off of sorts. A farewell. A new beginning.

Probably none of those things apply to the man in front of him. ]

Orga said it's a way for them to find a place they belong, without pain.

[ This man ... The scar is new, something he doesn't remember, stretching out thickly against the side of his face. But that's not the only difference, is it?

Mika reaches out to pluck a date from the hand Gaelio is holding out to him, pinching it between his forefinger and thumb. ]

I don't think you did.

Edited (I suk) 2017-11-21 21:32 (UTC)

[ The expected answer. Whatever Gaelio's own fixation back then (wounded pride, visceral disgust), further fueled by his investment in Ein, he wasn't oblivious to the relative indifference from Mikazuki. It threaded through his lack of humanity, legitimizing space rat.

A frame of mind that no longer fits, strange to remember, unable to recapture most of the feeling in it. Mikazuki as he is now might not have heard his apology, but it had been an apology born of his own mutilation, more than knowledge of Mikazuki and his kind. Tekkadan flared bright in his thoughts only when helping to blaze the trail toward McGillis.

Otherwise, they faded.

The point: his shifted regard of Mikazuki Augus has less to do with an advanced understanding of him (whatever the records he'd scoured, imprinting names and loose histories, unseemly private security companies, all of which places Orga Itsuka easy and firm in his mind, though he'd never come face to face with that man). More to do with lessons from Ein, from the machines in his neck.

Mikazuki, too, faded, a dead man's memories and a dead man's thorn, though he had been the tool wielded by the killing man to cut down Carta and Ein.

A different sort of dissonance in this, as close as he can get to awkward, any stretch of time standing without metal framework and death on a blade's edge. A careful look, the press of those stolid eyes.

Conversation.

It's terribly human. A boy with his own understanding of death rituals, eating dates, speculating on someone else's pain and place.

For a moment, his mind drifts, eyes sagging to his hand, and he considers taking a date, after all. An idle, wholly nonsensical thought of Persephone. His fingrers slacken on the gun, and after a last beat of hesitation, he tucks it into his coat belt. Then raises his freed hand, and as if mimicking Mikazuki's gesture, plucks up one date. Brushes it against a (less and less) white glove. ]

Belonging and peace, huh?

[ Glancing for Mikazuki's eyes, he performs a trick. The date between his fingers becomes a cherry, though only the convincing illusion of it. ]

I hope he's right.

[ Shouldn't he know? No, scratched out of the grave, pieced together. Let Carta know rest. He must let Ein rest. But... ]

It's true I didn't.

[ Popping the cherry into his mouth, but he forgets at first bite to adjust the taste. An eye twitches as he adjusts, delayed juice bursting.

Swallow first. Still just... holding out the rest of those dates... anyway... ]

Do you not remember, or has it not happened? Bael's hangar.

Edited (man man man and ok i guess he only has two hands ) 2017-11-22 06:28 (UTC)

[ You live, die, and live again. The curses of men, all the regrets and memories dissolving through the grains of earth along with everything else so you could reemerge, clean and whole and oblivious. Someday in some other time, maybe others will remember for you.

Even though Mikazuki moves from one point to the next decisively and without a shred of doubt like a mechanical doll, like something less than human to others' eyes, that's if they never knew him beyond the facts of the machinery and flesh. It weighs heavy on him as well, but it doesn't mean he won't move on, keep walking and keep breaking past the barriers that others put in their path.

Who knows how far they have to go? He doesn't, but he will be here until they find it, the place they're searching for.

Mika watches the fruit in Gaelio's hand change to a cherry, an unknown, unfamiliar redpurple gleam of the flesh, and silently chews on his own, the side of his cheek bulging with it. ]

I don't remember anything like that.

[ what a strange way to word it, a question like that. ]

[ Therein lies the reason. Or, that might have its appeal, the promise of an answer in that, for Gaelio who has spent his life and his afterlife stretching his hand toward one answer or another. Scratching through gravedirt and ash, because there had been too much weight on his shoulders, too distorted and heavy his regrets, for dissolution. No cleansing, no oblivion.

A strange turn to afterlife and reclaimed half-life, a less monumental answer in Mikazuki's recollection, or lack thereof.

The next date Gaelio selects becomes a grape between index finger and thumb, then swells into an apple. Idle shifting as he contemplates the meaning, reorients theory. If Qri could take from different universes, if she could take Julieta from the same day as Gaelio, where a month had passed here but not at all there, then could she take across time as well? Dragons as well as androids walking here. ]

Hm.

[ Where he and that man, he and McGillis had settled on Fate, he cannot be certain. His tattered resolve. Gaelio takes his turn at proper distrust and fastens it on the witch's self-serving machinations.

As ever, however, slick poetry has its hold.

Fate had a hand in bringing us here, or we would not be here. That the two of us were chosen for it...

Now Julieta, now Mikazuki, and Mikazuki before Bael. ]

Mikazuki --

[ Is it possible we're meant to understand something in this world before we'll be able to return to our own?

Gaelio tosses the apple, arcing high into the air above his head. ]

What do you think of Fate? Of history's trajectory?

[ Gaelio suspects Mikazuki thinks very little of both.

Both you and I are attempting to change the course of history itself, and now we find ourselves here.

The apple never falls. In fact, he crooks his wrist, moving his arm just enough to ensure that the date falls back into the handful there. Keeping track of reality while maintaining the illusion, his next vein of practice.

It almost seems as though conditions have been created for us to fill in some missing step.

Even if he advised Mikazuki away from that man's coup... his eyes slit, too fixed on the dates in his hand. With the given explanation for Qri, for their circumstances, his words needn't relate beyond that. Gaelio adjusts. ]

Whatever you do think, you'll be able to continue playing his hero here.

[ Made hero against the devil at Edmonton, the grandeur of Barbatos against a new monstrosity. Noble again through Qri. ]

[ Fate? History?

It would have become immediately apparent to Gaelio, previous suspicions or otherwise, that Mika thinks or even cares very little of such concepts existing. If he, or any of the others, simply rolled over on their bellies and trusted fate to take its course, they would be nothing but corpses on the ground. In every moment and time, there was always someone or something to try and stop them, to keep them from advancing. The first brigade, the Gjallarhorn, and now. In a way, it's akin to flowers growing through cracks of hard concrete; stronger through adversity, and even stronger still together.

Flowers that will never wilt.

Mila's eyes follow the movement of Gaelio's hand, the date between his fingers changing shape, swelling into an apple at the blink of an eye. Whether it's some kind of an illusion or a trick, a sleight of hand, he doesn't know or exactly care to. There's something that this man isn't forthcoming and saying outright, something in the inflections and pauses between words, in the narrowed line of his eyes. ]

I'm no hero.

[ Even that which will not wilt, can be crushed.

Anything can be crushed. Even an idea, even a dream.

The next date he leaves as is, but for the stroke against the glove, a cursory nod to removing any easy layer of dirt. Into his mouth as a date, chewed, and swallowed. No more pretense.

He thinks he doesn't care for it, too sweet, but he's less particular these days. Even if he doesn't like it, he'll eat it. ]

No.

[ Agreed, but without the metal one might expect. Plain as that. ]

But we cannot always control how others perceive us. We might attempt to shift opinion through action, with greater or less success. He chose you, he's chosen you. He sees you as he will.

[ His arm begins to tire. Gaelio debates allowing the rest to fall back to the ground. No. If Mikazuki doesn't want them, he should do the proper thing and contribute to their stores. Collect the rest and carry them to the stock. ]

It might prove troublesome for you.

[ If their revolution fails, the iron flowers will be crushed to dust. Rustal is that sort of man. A thought that fits less well now in Gaelio's palm, scratching against its slot in his mind.

Unless Fate, unless...

Shrugging a knapsack from his shoulder, he unzips it, dumping in the remaining handful. ]

Edited 2017-11-24 03:05 (UTC)

[ A frown starts to crease the space between his brows as Gaelio continues, but it's not out of anger or any discernible emotion, a mild confusion at best. Mika isn't the sort of person who thinks things through carefully and completely before taking action; rather, he usually let Orga do the thinking for him, come to a conclusion that would best fit their interests, and tell him what to do. Some people might call that lazy, even robotic in a sense, but that's always been the best way for things to work out as they should.

But there is no Orga here. This man... he talks too much, Mika decides privately. He vaguely remembers thinking something like this before, too. Even if some parts of him has changed (his eyes dart back up to Gaelio's face, surveying the scar), the mild sort of irritation he feels is similar.

All this 'choosing' this and 'seeing' that -- what was he even talking about, anyway?

Mika shrugs slightly, barely discernible under the shift of the oversized coat. ]

You talk a lot.

[ Just like that, Mika moves away from the conversation, cutting it off as he crouches down to pick up the rest of the stray dates that's fallen on the ground. For each and every one he picks up, he gives them a cursory wipe on his sleeve before popping them into a pocket of his jacket. ]

If it's troublesome, I can just get rid of it.

[ In so expressionless a face, the smallest of furrows shows distinct. In so deliberate a form, the slightest of motions looks exaggerated. Yet, despite evidence of reaction, that Gaelio's words elicit some emotion, that succinct dismissal of the topic makes it unmistakable: it means nothing to Mikazuki.

What flares up is not the once familiar blaze of indignation, prickling at a rat's assertion he spits hot air at tedious length.

What instead seizes him, fingers jerking still and white-knuckled on his knapsack, muscles yanked achingly tight, is that blinding realization.

His voice sounds far, too far, drowned out by the ringing in his ears, the notes too sharp. ]

Do I?

[ It means nothing to Mikazuki, that McGillis chose him.

It means nothing to Mikazuki, that he and Tekkadan had been selected as allies to realize a star strewn dream, a sweeping revolution.

To the one discarded, it meant everything.

It means everything, still. ]

I guess you bring it out of me.

[ Him, and that man. Tightness in each word. He tries to stretch it out, regulates his breathing even, blinks past spots of red and white and snow and Carta and metal crunching in and I've not killed my allies, or even attempted to. Only my enemies.

All that effort, and his hands still shake when he zips the bag, noting that Mikazuki sees to the rest of the dates.

Here, now he'll talk less, appetite as lost for the conversation. Can he get rid of it? It might be too late, it might not be. It might be impossible, it might be why they were taken from their respective times, it might be wholly unrelated.

As if in delayed reflection, Gaelio only shrugs. ]

Edited 2017-11-26 19:43 (UTC)

[ Their worlds are too different, his and Gaelio's, both looking in different directions, or maybe it's just by the grace of being, somehow time and again, in opposing sides of the tide. They are all swept up in that man's plans, whether they're aware of it or not, and just because they are trapped in this witch's coven to fulfill some sort of sacred duty to aid her or whatever, it wasn't going to change a thing. Just a temporary hiccup, a halting truce uneasily set up.

It means nothing to him whatsoever. All his life, the only thing that's ever mattered, the only voice he's ever truly listened to has been—

But he isn't here.

Mika is dismayed, honestly speaking, but he doesn't necessarily dwell on it. People of his sort don't sit and dwell and stew over past mistakes and losses, they pick up whatever they can carry and move on.

So Mika will move on, as decisively as he could, and if the steps he take here bring him closer back to where he should be, to where orga is, then that will be enough. ]

The things about heroes, and fate... I don't really understand any of it.

[ Mika picks up the last of the dates, popping it into his mouth and starting to chew on it. ]

If you haven't died, does that mean you are going to get in our way again?

[ Tugging one strap over his shoulder, Gaelio lets the other dangle, forcing his attention back to Mikazuki's face. Those dull, placid eyes. Simplicity might be a strength, one he has come to appreciate in others. It allowed no room for deception or uncertainty, though it might also limit comprehension of grander concepts.

Whether a lack of capacity or a lack of interest, did the cause matter against the result?

Without understanding, no meaning. Even with understanding, Gaelio doubts it would matter. Toward what did Mikazuki look, toward what does he strive? Are they so unable to even glimpse one another's worlds, the pigmentation, the light? Through Ein, he'd thought he understood.

But he doesn't know how to reach Mikazuki, and even if he cared to, he's can't afford the attempt. He cannot look away from the one to whom, for whom he reaches, even for a second. He cannot spare a hand, even a finger.

Even if, as that man would have it, Mikazuki would stand in that same path, beside or before him.

And if Gaelio stands in front of them, he has no doubt as to what Mikazuki would do. Yet, the question of where he stands is no longer a simple one, if it had ever been. Clutching in the rain, curled beneath the sheets, closer on the beach.

Logically, it could only be a fleeting truce, terminated upon their return.

I want to continue it. To find whatever was missing before. ]

...I don't know.

[ Admitted bleak, admitted quiet.

Retreating from what bleeds raw in it, his tone twists wry, like the empty smirk ghosting over his features. ]

If I answered yes, would you have killed me right now?

[ But he does not pretend uncertainty for preservation.

Gaelio shuts his eyes, not daring it. Aware of the gun in his belt, his hands lifeless at his sides. A moment to collect this and that piece, to secure what slivers keep him whole. ]

Have you had a tour?

[ He thought he understood. People are prone to doing that, a sense of understanding, a sense of will. To pass judgement on others through their own measure of life and the experiences that come with it. Too easy to write them off as ragtag bunch of kids acting too tough for their real worth. Too easy to write them off as mere children, a basic pawn in some bigger game. They've been used before, exploited and abused for their perceived uses.

In some way, perhaps that's true. They might not know what they've stepped into, just what they started motion in a world that's both too big and too small to hold them, the consequence of dropping a pebble into a well. Walking in blindfolded and gagged. But none of that matters to Mikazuki.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe they're right. But there's always a sliver of chance, hanging on by the skin of their teeth and the quick of their nails, of something different.

There's always hope.

Beneath the coat, tucked between his chest and his arm, the sling, the weight of the gun snug and tangible. But Mika doesn't move. It's not because of any sort of apprehension or nervousness, even though Gaelio's hands are limp by his sides and the gun sits in plain sight tucked into his belt. Even though it would be easy.

His eyes are quiet, and he looks at Gaelio like he is a book he hasn't learned all the words for yet; curious yet resigned. ]

If he tells me to, I will.

[ There is no uncertainty in his words. It is sure, and even though Mika utters it like it's the most obvious thing in the world there's no immediate venom in it -- but nevertheless, it's almost palpable, the weight of conviction behind the short sentence, the complete trust he puts in one Orga Itsuka. He sounds like he is sure he will kill him. He sounds like someone who's always had to work to make things happen for him and his comrades. It's like clearing snow from a path, like brushing away dirt from the table. ]

A tour?

[ Mika shifts his weight slightly to the other foot, tilting his chin up, canting his gaze sideways. ]

Not yet.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( TDM | #6 )

barty jr

that's cold, man

space is cold

i wasted my v. clever spaceheater line

dw it's beautiful and immortalized in my inbox

delete it immediately

never say never

"never"

/panicked honk

/throws bread at

no subject

no subject

pats Gali on the head

don't you might catch something

dw he's already inoculated against gay (in canon apparently)