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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"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.

"It's worse that, the beating, I think. I would rather a knife." It's Eponine's turn to look away. She eyes one of the men with the ribbons: he's good looking. but Nancy mentioning Cooper makes her glance again and then quickly away.

"I don't know. I don't care if a man does hit me. What difference does it make? It will not kill me, and if it does, the better for it shan't happen again." She raises her bottle to her lips before she remembers it's empty. She puts it down again.

"But there is hope you have found someone nice." Every time Eponine found a nice man, Montparnasse either killed him, or made her watch him kill them.

She presses her lips together, taking it all in. Eponine could be beaten as much as anyone wanted, she'd still live. It was terrible, what her sire did to her. But Nancy knew better than anyone that dull ache, that deep pull between two people. A love so strong it would so often become violent.

"I have. For now, at least." Nancy finishes off her drink, and signals for another round. Best get Eponine fed. She had money to spare right now. She sighs. "Once Bill's out of prison, I'll be back with him." Her relationship with Cooper had an expiration date on it.

"Yeah? Does he know? Not Bill, your vampire?" Eponine can't imagine doing that. God, if Marius, all that time ago, had just loved her - seen her there, just once, then her life would be so different. Could she imagine going back to Montparnasse, if she had Marius' love? Eponine can't imagine it.

"I don't know, you know?" She licks the trailing blood from the glass of her new bottle. "I think there are some what have to have such men as ours. Proper ladies couldn't take it. Me? It don't matter, really. I can take it." She's learned to enjoy bits of it. "If someone else would have me... but proper men don't want women like me."

She inhales deeply. "He knows." And he wasn't happy about it. Their relationship officially had an expiration date, and she knew she was going to have to work hard to explain everything to Bill when he got released. It was going to be awful. But wonderful, to see him again. To touch him, kiss him. Be with someone that was actually, well, an adult physically.

"No, but where's the fun in proper men?" Nancy has to ask with a grin. "They're boring, ain't they? Granted I've only ever had my two, but...Well, Cooper and Bill ain't exactly proper by any means." Never mind that Cooper was on the Night Council now. But he was still hardly normal or proper.

"You'll find someone who ain't your sire."

Eponine shrugs her reply. "I would miss the fireworks, I think." But how nice, just for once, to have something normal, something calm and boring. Wouldn't it be lovely to go home to a warm house and know your man will kiss you lovingly, and there will be food, television, him with a reassuring arm around you, holding you close. That's what Eponine would love. Just for a while, just to see what it's like.

To Nancy's last comment, she simply shakes her head. "I cannot. He will... well. I shan't have more blood on my heart, you know? I should rather I am with 'Parnasse than him murder the man I love. For me, it is better to be alone always. It doesn't matter." But it does. It hurts her so much, but there's nothing to be done. Whilst Eponine has been arrested several times over the years, Montparnasse has always evaded capture. Montparnasse has often left Eponine to serve the sentence for both of them. The police cannot contain Montparnasse. She won't be free of him, unless he decides it. She swigs from her bottle.

"But to happier things, Miss! A full belly! It has been a long time, and I shall burst soon. But I don't care. It is so good!"

Nancy had always had that in Bill. There was food on the table, and she could put her arms around him and be near him and kiss him. But then there were the fights, his temper flaring...

She swallows thickly- Eponine's sire killed any man she loved. She could see it now, if she didn't do her best to convince Bill that Cooper wasn't worth it. Both men had short tempers, add a wolf and a vampire into the mix and it was going to be a blood bath.

She takes another drink.

Nancy laughs lightly. "Good! I'm glad, Eponine." Some of the color was coming back into the other woman's cheeks. "Better than me, yeah?" A bad joke, but she wanted to come back to her boyfriend with his dinner safe in her veins.

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Test Drive Meme: August-September 2017

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