thetube | Test Drive Meme: August-September 2017

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Welcome to the Underground test drive meme! This is where you can try out the AU version of your character, start some potential CR and get a feel for the world of the game. Choose your character's species, read up on the available factions and you're ready to go. Put your character's name in your subject line when you post, tag out, and have fun!

Note to potential players: Looking for an OOC space to brainstorm your AU? Head over to our permanent character workshop post to ask for feedback and share ideas.

Note to current players: Activity in this meme counts as game canon! So you can use it for activity check. If you end up playing anything that you can't or don't want to use as game canon, it's fine to ignore it. (In that case you shouldn't submit it for activity check.)

Here are some prompts to inspire you:

1) WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE. Welcome to London! It's time to introduce yourself to your faction, to your fellow supernatural citizens, would-be friends, potential enemies... Will people quake with fear or awe when you enter the room? Or are you some nobody trying to make a name for yourself? Either way, gotta start networking.

2) THE RACE IS ON. The competition within your faction is even worse than the competition outside. That guy over there has turned sucking up to your boss into an art form. What about the woman who works out at 5am every morning and can probably punch through a wall? If you want to climb the ladder, you'd better start working harder.

3) THE WRONG DIRECTION. It's a big city and it's easy to get lost. Normally that's not such a big deal, but this time you've taken a wrong turn and ended up in hostile territory. If you're spotted by the wrong person, you could be in for a seriously bad time. Is there anyone around who can help?

4) NEVER LOSE CONTROL. You had one drink... or two... Maybe it's almost the full moon, or maybe there's some magic in the air messing with your hormones, but you're this close to going all out with your fangs or your claws or your magic. You need to get out of here, fast.

5) SWING IT, SHAKE IT. You've got a disco ball, a killer outfit and music so loud you can feel it pumping through the dance floor. Show the humans how it's done.

6) KARAOKE. It's karaoke night in one of London's favourite supernatural bars and that tone-deaf werewolf is hogging the mike again.

7) RUN AROUND. It seemed simple, right? One errand to run, just one. And yet the world seems to be conspiring against you. Your alarm didn't go off, you missed the bus or train, you got caught in traffic, someone spilled their drink on your brand new leather jacket, you tripped over and literally fell headfirst into a dumpster... Oh, God. Could this day get any worse?

8) CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. Anything goes.

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Nancy looked back when she heared the voice. Automatically, her hand flew to her purse, her green eyes looking down. She had been quite sure she hadn't dropped anything, but a familiar hunger rose up in her stomach, propelling her forward with her hand outstretched for the coin.

"Shit, yeah, thanks-" she said, smiling at the other girl in the dim light.

As soon as Nancy's hand is close enough, Eponine goes to close her own fist over Nancy's wrist, so that she might pull the girl quickly into the shadows. It's not neat. It's not even particularly efficient, but style has gone completely out of the window in Eponine's desperate hunger.

Perhaps Nancy will notice the moon glinting from Eponine's fangs. Perhaps she's already realised Eponine's intention, before Eponine attempts to press her up against a wall.

"It won't hurt, Madame," Eponine mutters. "It is like a kiss. Just close your eyes and it will be like -" her face is close now.
"I swear, it won't hurt a thing."

Nancy knows what is happening, as the girl's fingers close around her wrist. Shit, she thinks too late. A small woman, she's easily pressed against the wall. No, she knows what this is. What the girl wants. What Nancy does not want to give her.

"Don't do this," she says, trying to keep her voice even, her heartbeat steady.Maybe Eponine notices the scars on her neck from other fangs before. "I'm- I'm Cooper's girlfriend- you don't want to do this." Calling on Cooper's name, the same way she has on occasion called on Bill's.

"I know magic and I will use it."

Who the hell is Cooper? The name means nothing to Eponine, and her contemptuous laugh emphasises it.
"Say as you will, Madame, but I am hungry." She runs a finger over Nancy's neck, over the scars there.
"Cooper is a vampire?" she asks, in surprise. But it doesn't matter, not really, does it? She goes to push Nancy's face, to force her to turn her head.

"It is just a little. God, just to taste even a drop - but no! A taste is a tease. It is better to have none than just a taste. But if you die, shall Cooper tell Montparnasse?" A flicker of doubt creeps into her eyes, just for a moment, and she hesitates.

"But I am so hungry, God, I think even a beating will be worth it, and I should do anything to avoid that, you know? It is the worst in the world, for your arse to be so sore you cannot sit, or your stomach that you cannot bend to do even a lace. He is not here besides, not any of them, so why should I fear it? No, it is silly to be afraid, for if it comes, it shall. But I will take it for my God, I think I will go mad without it."

"I am sorry, Madame." She prepares to bite.

"Cooper'll do worse'n that!" She threatens. "He works for the Night Council- look we're both friends of Jean-Claude. He'd be very upset for either of us to get hurt." So please don't bite her. please.

It's funny, going from a girl six months ago who sold her blood for money and now was asking the vampire not to take it from her.

Eponine moves in closer and at the last moment Nancy says: "I know what it's like- to be hungry and sore. I can take you to someone that you can feed from. Someone willing. Please- I have little brothers that need me."

It stops her. It's the desperation in Nancy's voice that stops Eponine. The idea of a brother.
Eponine's grip doesn't loosen, but she leans back a little.

"I had a brother, and a sister. I do not know - I did not see them when he -"

There's desperation in her expression, mirroring Nancy's pleas.

"It has been days, Madame. Days. I do not know the length, but you know how it is? When all around you, the world moves and you are a ghost to it? Nothing has felt real, only you. I can feel your blood in your arm, Madame. I can smell - God! I am half crazy for it. Even just a drop - but your brothers."

She closes her eyes, scrunching up her pale face as she fights herself not to give in and just lunge at Nancy.
Slowly, her grip loosens, and she moves back, away from Nancy.

It's the hardest thing she's ever done.

"Thank you- thank you!" She's thanking the woman, taking a few steps away from the wall, toward the street.

"Let me help you, for your kindness. We're in Islington. Let me see if I can find you a donor, so that you can eat. Poor thing." She knew how awful hunger was, to be on the streets.

"You're new in town, I'll take it?" she had never seen her, after all, and her accent was clearly French.

"You thank me for not drinking from you?" Eponine laughs, and shakes her head at the absurdity of it all. "You wish to help me? Madame, are you mad?"

She follows Nancy, her hands wrapped around her middle, hugging tight.

"I've been here perhaps a night? I don't know. It all begins to be the same, you know? It is queer when I have not eaten a while." It doesn't help that her last intake of blood was fae either: she'd been off her face on the cargo train from Calais.

"And you? You are from round here, aren't you? I hear it in your voice."

"I have been called mad before. But most just call me Nancy." She gives Eponine a surprisingly warm smile, considering she'd just nearly had her for dinner. Or breakfast.

She nods. "It is, it all just blends together..." they survived on very different things, but they knew what it was to survive.

"Born and raised in the East End," she tells her. "I live around here now, though. Know all the good spots where you can get yourself a hot, willing meal. There's a vampire bar up just this way."

"Nancy," Eponine repeats. She can't help smiling as the other woman does. Eponine doesn't quite understand why Nancy is so friendly towards her, but she can at least understand how it is possible for Nancy to swing from such extreme fear that has her begging for her life to actively helping Eponine to feed. It would make so little sense to perhaps anyone but Eponine.

"The East End." She realises that she's parroting Nancy, and laughs. "It is the underworld, no? I have read of it. It is as where I grew up in Paris. P'raps we are not so different?" Apart from the fact that she grew up nearly two hundred years ago.

"I -" It's embarrassing to say the least. "Madame, how much will it cost? There is a reason why I am finding people in the street, you know?"

She likes the way her name sounds with a French accent. Jean-Claude's accent had always been one of his redeeming qualities, even at a time when she'd loathed him.

"Yes, it is." She knew the underworld very well, all the sordid creatures that lurked there. "Perhaps- maybe one day we can compare stories." It'd be astonishing, the similarities.

"I will pay- in exchange for you having spared my life." If the vampire had grown up like she had, she didn't want anything out of pity. But a bargain, a deal, that was a language they could both speak. Nancy had been poor for most of her life, and even now tried not to use her boyfriend's extreme wealth to her advantage. She had her own job, made her own money. It wasn't her fault he also liked to buy her things.

Nancy's right. It's hard for Eponine to stomach the thought of someone paying for her, even such a meagre amount as a quick meal. It's hard even to accept it in exchange for Nancy's life.

But, she's hungry, and accepting now is easier than trying to attack someone else.

"I'll pay you back, Madame." It's the only way she can let herself give in. Will she keep the promise? Probably not; it will be one of those that comes and goes, like the money that passes through her bony fingers as quickly as running water. It feels a bit better for now though, to give in with that promise between them. She's betting Nancy knows anyway, that she won't.

"But now you live here? With the vampires? I shouldn't think that was safe: I am surely not the only girl who does not wish to spend her money on a meal? How is it you live, Nancy?"

"I know you will." But she gives Eponine a look that clearly says she knows she won't. And she won't ever bother her about it, either. But the promise is important to Eponine, and Nancy knows it.

She nods. "I do. A lot of these vampires know me, at least as the girlfriend of their Night Council rep. But for a time... I was a blood worker." The blood equivalent of a sex worker, and she had done them both.

"Besides, it's illegal to feed from the unwilling. Jean-Claude don't take well to it."

"Don't care what Jean-Claude thinks." Eponine wraps her arms about her middle, and her shoulders slump into a hunch. "It is my first time in forever that someone is not, 'Eponine, do, Eponine, here, 'Ponine, 'Ponine.' I shan't do as this vampire tells me as well."

She grins back at Nancy, unfazed that she was a blood worker. "That is why so many scars, Ma'mzelle? People are paying to feed from you?" Her own solutions to finding money have been no less sordid over the years, though it is generally she who walks away with the full belly and her victim's money to boot.
"They have girls like you in Paris. Montparnasse has used them before, but me?" She shrugs. "I think, if my blood were to run, that would be my life, but he has changed me, you see? When I am still young, still a bit pretty enough for a street girl. But he cannot make me do the feeding. I am thankful for that - I still remember the pain from him."

She smiles suddenly. "You are a brave girl to still be here. I should have run from it all, if I had known." She wouldn't. But she likes to think that she would have made at least one good decision in her life.

"You're Eponine, then? It's a pretty name." Another warm smile. "It sounds like something you'd find in Shakespeare."

She nods. "That's a good reason for part of 'em. I don't do it anymore, now that I've settled down with Cooper. But- thank you. Sometimes I think I should have run, too. But..." Absentmindedly she places with the charms around her neck. "But I stay."

Nancy swallows, then points to a red neon sign up ahead. "That's one of the underground bars. There's lots in Islington." This particular one was a relatively trashy joint that Nancy had an odd sort of feeling that Eponine would feel right at home in.

"Shakespeare?" The name vaguely rings a bell, but Eponine's not exactly sure what he might have written. "To most, it is plain 'Ponine. But so - you can call me what you like. I don't care. But I do like Eponine. My mama said it were from a romance, but I don't know. I have not had so many books."

Eponine steals a glance at Nancy when she pauses. She gets that desire to run, the determination to stay and the conflict it brings. In the darkness, she shrugs. "I know how it is," she mutters. Her conflict was solved for her, but it has taken nearly two hundred years to work out.

"It looks like... like... perhaps, maybe the clubs where I have worked at home." So rough as, and no one cares. She likes that. She relaxes, just a little, and hurries towards it.

"Ma'am? Is it safe for you to come in, Nancy?"

"He wrote Romeo and Juliet," she says by way of explanation. That was the play most people could name. Granted, Nancy was only familiar with the plays you'd regularly see produced, or in cinemas.

"Is it! I will call you Eponine- it's your name, ain't it?" She glances at the other girl out of the corner of her eye. It wasn't fair to call her a girl. She had to be maybe Lydia's age, maybe even as young as Dodger. At least, physically. With vampires, age was a funny thing.

Nancy follows behind Eponine by half a step.

"It is- they won't feed if you ain't willing. And they know me in there." It wasn't like Cripples' where she always got a warm welcome. But people know who she was in the vampire community now. "Come on in."

Inside, the bar was dark, but warm. Low lighting kept everyone who wished in the shadows. There were men and women lounging about, made clear by the red ribbon around their wrists that they were there to be fed upon.

"Do you want bottled, or tap?" She asks. "Let's find us a nice seat, yeah? I could do with a drink myself." A human drink. They served those, too.

Eponine has heard of Romeo and Juliet. She's not read the play: it was a drag to get through when she tried, full of too difficult language and ideas that she just couldn't see. But she likes the idea of the love story. She's seen the film with that handsome boy in it. So she nods, as if she knows Shakespeare.

Eponine looks around. It looks like the bars that she's been in in Paris, the human bars that have developed over time. She's never seen such a thing for vampires though. No doubt there are blood bars in Paris, but it's not Montparnasse's style. Where is the fun in feeding from the willing?

"Bottle or tap?" She mutters, parroting Nancy. It takes a moment for Eponine to even realise that Nancy's asking her a question.
"Oh - the - uhm..." She shrugs. It's embarrassing to admit that she'll take whatever's cheapest.

Nancy nods. "D'you want prepackaged blood, love, or d'you want to drink it from a person?" Probably best if she went with bottled, Nancy thought. "I'd recommend bottle, honestly."

She offers the other girl a smile. "Get whatever you want."

"Yeah, bottle," Eponine says, distractedly. "Please, I mean." She's not exactly used to good manners.

As soon as the bottle's on the bar, Eponine presses the top to her lips and begins to guzzle. She doesn't stop until the bottle is completely gone. Blood drips from her mouth and down over her chin. Just as quickly, she wipes the sticky blood from her face, and sucks on her fingers to make sure every bit of the blood is consumed.
Meal completely consumed, Eponine grins sheepishly at Nancy.

"That were a bit disgusting to watch, weren't it? Sorry. 'Parnasse says I eat like a pig, but I don't care. It fills the belly, doesn't it? I should rather a full belly than to eat proper and lose half my meal 'cos I am too slow."

Nancy wastes no time in making sure that Eponine gets her bottle of blood. There was a market for it now, more than before since Jean-Claude outlawed feeding on the unwilling.

She doesn't mind the way Eponine drinks. She's happy to let it happen,a fter all. It's a good call she went for the bottle rather than a person, if she truly had such a lack of control. Any person could have easily been killed.

Nancy touches her neck absentmindedly.

"No, I've seen worse." Starving preteen boys getting food, for one. Other vampires, for another. Some clients of hers had loved to get her blood everywhere. "Boyfriend's a vampire, remember?"

"Who's Parnasse? Is he your sire?"

Eponine nods. "Yes, my sire. I suppose you say boyfriend now, but we never called it that back when I were alive. We laid together and that, you know? He's dead handsome. Even when we had nowt, he were dressed the dandy. He were a cut throat, you know? 'E went after the rich ladies he could charm. He didn't bite. He slits with his knife and drinks." She smiles in an almost daydreamy fondness.

"You know when someone ain't nice, not exactly, but you can't help going with 'em anyway? He'd hit me as soon as kiss me if 'e were in the mood. But it were kinda... good. It can make you feel alive, you know?" Eponine rests her chin in her hand. "I don't like being hit, but with him, summat good would come of it in the end. You know?"

Aware of how different their relationship was to most people's, Eponine is hasty to add, "Well, it were a different time, weren't it?" It's only half a lie. He was that bad when she was alive, and he got steadily worse once she was turned.

The air is sucked out of the room as she sits there listening to Eponine describe her relationship with Montparnasse. There's a hazy smile appearing on her lips as she can't help but imagine her own situation.

Bill was so similar. He loved her and she knew it and she saw it all the time in all of the little things he did. But he hit her and he kissed her, and something good did come out of it.

Nancy takes another long drink.

"Yeah. I know what you mean." This time, she's looking out the window, not looking at Eponine at all.

Eponine catches Nancy's tone, and she shrugs, embarrassed a little.

"Indeed, Miss, we have more in common than vampire masters."

She traces her finger around the mouth of her blood bottle. "Perhaps I should not have said it. It don't matter, does it? I am alive, and you. Montparnasse is... it is like a firework, innit? It makes me feel a little bit alive, and that or death, is what I want most."

She glances over at Nancy, just quickly. "Your fellow - he goes with the knife? I don't mind that so much. It is belts and buckles on my arse, so it hurts to sit or lie, that I hate the most. A knife is nothing. He won't cut my head off. He likes me here too much to end my life. Or hates me? I don't know."

"Bill wasn't a vampire-" she says, trying to explain herself. "He was a werewolf. I've known him almost all my life- and... no one has described it quite like that before." She gives Eponine a hazy sort of half-smile, unsure if she was happy she now had a word to describe her relationship with Bill, or not.

"Bill used his hands. Fists. Hit me with a few things. He's never been one for a knife, all about strength. But he loves me." Present tense- she knew it was true, just as she still loved him. Just as she loved Cooper.

"Cooper'd never hit me." Hit others, grab her, sure. But he knew her past now. He'd never hit her. Though Nancy wasn't sure how much she believed him.

Test Drive Meme: August-September 2017

Never Lose Control

Re: Never Lose Control

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