graveyardsmash | TEST DRIVE MEME: MAY/JUNE

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TEST DRIVE MEME: MAY/JUNE

TDM: MAY/JUNE

Welcome to the Ryslig Test Drive Meme! Below are a few prompts to get you started, but you may make up any prompt you desire! Please take a look at the navigation page for rules, setting information, and links to reserves and apps. Have fun!

SCENARIO ONE

You wake up on the beach thoroughly drenched, with your mouth full of sand. The salt water is making all the cuts and scrapes on your skin sting and the sand isn't helping. The air is slightly humid, ruining any feeling of refreshment you might have gotten from your dip in the ocean.

There are lights in the distance, but the unfriendly scent of gunpowder fills the air. If you're lucky, you're alone. If not - you might find yourself staring up into a pair of monstrous eyes or down the barrel of a local's shotgun.

SCENARIO TWO

So you've just arrived, and already some of the natives are trying to get on your good side with offers of food, shelter and other luxuries in return for hoping you don't eat them. They even have some helpful pamphlets to share with you. "How To Deal With Changes", "Alternatives to Human Flesh", "What to Expect When You're Expecting (to turn into a monster)" are all on the more informative end of the scale. There's even some detailing certain monsters, and the changes they go through. Some of these seem to have been passed down from one monster to the next.

Among these however, are some... not so helpful ones. "Bunnyipyips And You", "Axe Thief Axehounds," and "So you're becoming a Fur Bearing Trout" among others. Sometimes they have marks on them from previous readers saying they're lies, or pointing out good "jokes."

Then there are the people who aren't happy to see you at all. Glares and silent, judging stares if you're lucky, torches and pitchforks attempting to drive you out of the town if you're not. You may need a friend to help you.

SCENARIO THREE

"Seek us out," the voice whispers in your head, and before you have time to question it you've found yourself in someplace entirely alien.

Maybe it's the Fog God's ghostly town of Dyster, where exultant followers dance around bonfires and sing their praises to the skies above. Maybe it's the Fourth God's arcade, with small robots wheeling about amidst the lights and colors of old pinball machines.

Only one thing is certain: you are not alone, in this sacred place.

SCENARIO FOUR

The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.

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That startles a laugh out of him that he only just remembers to stifle. She always did know how to bring a little light to a dark moment. "That bad, huh?"

At least despite the physical changes, Maya's still...Maya.

That's a weird sort of comforting. That's something he can grasp onto, a small thread of sanity in a world gone mad.

"I hated that arc. It was too dark and hopeless for my tastes. They really lost the plot there. But it didn't stay that way, at least." A roundabout way of trying to bring some hope, even though he didn't know a damn thing about the situation here. He doesn't have any grand delusions of being able to fix it, not on his own. And he doesn't know what to do about Maya and her new physical condition.

He doesn't know what to do about anything, and that terrifies him.

Edgeworth's words soothe part of that panic Maya's been suppressing this whole time. No matter how bad things got, she hadn't given up-- and now, with a friend from her world finally there, the little flicker of hope she'd been protecting burns even brighter.

"Well, full spoilers, this one's pretty bad too," she warns Edgeworth, "but don't worry. No matter what, you've got the Magnificent Maya Fey at your side."

It's a bit boastful, sure, but underneath it is a genuine promise. As far as Maya's concerned, Phoenix and Edgeworth have been taking care of her as long as she was in the city. Now, with three years of monsterhood under her belt, it's Maya's turn to do the same for him.

She holds up a hand to pause their conversation and shifts on the rock, holding herself up on her palms as she starts to sort of kick free of her now-dry tail, the skin stretching and finally (and fortunately, painlessly) ripping apart as though all along it were only made of inky slime and not flesh or sinew. Her well-planned skirt falls over her thighs and she kicks her legs out, free, before leaning back and sort of-- rolling up onto her feet.

Turning around to face Edgeworth, she holds out her hand.

"I'll tell you anything you want to know," she offers, "right after we catch the first bus out of here."

Before Miles can reply to the Magnificent Maya Fey, she stretches and...splits...her tail...into legs. He winces, because it looks painful, but she doesn't seem to be bothered by it.

The voice of Agent Lang pops up in his head, as if to mock him: Lang Zi says: in unfamiliar territory, the wolf follows the cub who knows his feet.

Ugh. Now I'm actually making up the proverbs he always cites.

He takes the offered hand and gets to his feet, fastidiously dusting his suit off out of habit. Not like it matters. He's still half-covered in wet sand.

"I'd prefer to get as far away from the armed men as possible, if it's all the same to you."

"Don't worry. I know the safest ways out of here."

Maya's established a rapport with the fisherwomen of Vandare. They have a deal; she doesn't eat them (or does eat men who've caused them trouble) and they buy her catches, and neither party is a danger to the other. It's past their boats that Maya leads Edgeworth, greeting the night shift with quiet smiles and a nod of acknowledgement; anyone who's a friend of Maya's won't be allowed to do them any harm, either.

Past boats come the streets of Vandare and Maya walks on a carefully chosen path, doing very little to call attention to the two of them, until they arrive under a newly-battery-lit streetlight next to a particular bus stop. It pales in comparison to the modern ones Maya and Edgeworth are used to, something Maya's sure he'll notice, but now that they're here Maya gestures to the seat for Edgeworth to take one.

"Don't worry. Things are a little quieter in the city," she assures him. She doesn't need to add what she can do to keep them safe, doesn't have to bring that scary part of the conversation in so soon, but she knows it will come around eventually.

"The bus to Bavan comes around every thirty minutes, and everyone's more used to monsters there."

As they pass the fisherwomen, Miles nods in acknowledgement. They seem to know Maya, and thus they seem to tolerate him. At least, they're not shooting at him, which he considers an improvement.

The streetlight is decidedly...rural...in nature, so he files that bit of information away, too. Just something else about this place that he needs to know.

Vandare. Bavan. Places he's going to need to be able to get to, if he can't find a way home. And damned if he's leaving without Maya, whatever's happened to her.

"Well," he says when she explains about the bus, "if I see any monsters, I'll let you know."

Maya has to do a doubletake at what Edgeworth says. She really ought to be more used to people saying things like that, but even now, it catches her by surprise.

So she does what anyone would do and poses a bit stupidly, obviously showoffy, gesturing grandly to herself.

"Well, you see one! It's me, Mr. Edgeworth, I'm the monster."

And to punctuate her point, she forces a wide smile, more to show off her sharp orca teeth. Of course, she isn't the most monstrous example of any of the monsters, really, and she knows it... but maybe that's a good thing, right now.

He looks at her - takes in the sharp teeth in conjunction with everything he's already seen, welcome to Wonderland, Alice - and shakes his head slightly.

"No, you're not," he says quietly, utterly at odds with her flippant tone. "I'd know if you were."

'Monster' for him is more of a state of psychological being than a physical condition. He'd been taken from his father and raised by a monster, after all, who'd made him monstrous, too. Even now he still fought with that appellation, the 'Demon Prosecutor', because to tell the truth it hadn't been undeserved.

They both knew monsters. Maya had even literally played host to one. Dahlia Hawthorne was dead and gone and nobody would channel her again, but she'd nearly gotten so many of them killed - Maya included.

Maya can't hold back a sigh. It's not as though she feels much different, nor has she not heard it before; Dandy, when he'd lost his memory, had told her the very same thing, and so had Rapunzel.

You're not a monster, they'd told her, and she'd held onto the thread of the idea every time she ate or read one of Aunamee's posts or thought about her talk with the Fog God.

"Not that kind of monster," she asserts, not as able to keep her cool as she was with Dandy and Rapunzel. They didn't know her before, weren't agents of the law. Couldn't be disappointed in her the same way. "Like werewolves! And floating skeletons! And spooky stuff!"

She can't help but be anxious, the feeling translating into her restless gesticulations, the clenching and unclenching of her webbed fingers, and the way Maya breathes as if to say something else and stops. Finally, finally, she decides on something--

"Halloween things that eat people!"

At her outburst, his first instinct is to flippantly reply 'I thought you preferred burgers,' but while that's something he could do under normal circumstances, this conversation wouldn't even be happening under normal circumstances.

Something else to file away.

"I see," he says slowly while he processes this, and it's a damn lie because he doesn't see at all. That wave of terror at not knowing what the fuck is going on swells up again, and he shoves it aside. Plenty of time for that later.

"That's quite a departure from the Maya Fey I know," he says at last. "I'm going to need a little bit more of an explanation. I doubt you woke up one morning deciding that you'd like to flirt with getting kuru."

Everything had a reason. Cause and effect. Even if it didn't seem logical, there was a reason she was saying this, and a reason she looked so different than she had when he saw her only a few months ago.

Once again Maya's left staring, browspots knit together in worry. Does Edgeworth not get it? Doesn't he believe her? Well, there's always that possibility- as he mentions, it is something even she could never see herself doing.

"It's not like I want to," she begins, "I don't want to! But if we don't eat once we turn, we go... Kind of crazy."

She'd learned the hard way, after all.

"This place changes so much about you. It takes away your humanity," Maya continues. "And if you try your hardest not to hurt anyone, all it does is make you hurt more. You can starve yourself and— and lose yourself, and when you wake up there's like four guys all dried up like jerky because some weird god turned you into something that drinks water out of people!"

That was too specific to be anything but speaking from experience. "Maya," he says quietly, trying to be comforting about a horror he can understand to a degree. For fifteen years he'd thought that he was a murderer. Now Maya's saying that she knows she is - not just that, but a cannibal, or an aquavore, or...something.

He's not sure what else to say. It's not his place to absolve her. What he wants to be able to do is tell her that it's okay, but it's not, and they both know that.

Funny that they'd met when he was prosecuting her for a murder she didn't commit, and now here she was, admitting multiple homicide to him. Funny in kind of a cosmic-joke, laugh-so-you-don't-scream way.

"So you're saying that in this case, the relatively more ethical thing to do is actively kill rather than enter some sort of blackout and cause more harm?" Obviously 'not killing anyone' is the most ethical choice, but harm reduction is also a consideration. He never thought he'd be able to put theoretical ethics to good use.

Everything Edgeworth says seems to stop Maya in her tracks, like it isn't what she expects. Her body is guarded; shoulders gathered, elbows to her sides, making herself as small as possible, like she's awaiting some righteous lashing out or fear. But each time, it doesn't come.

It makes sense, if she really were to think about it (though it's a little difficult for her to think right now). Edgeworth's such a good prosecutor, after all, taking new information like it's nothing; he's just the person she remembers him to be. Maya just has to put a little more trust in him.

After all, this is his fate, too.

"Yeah," she concedes, after taking in a deep breath. "Yes. Most of the time, that's.. what people do around here. Monster-people. The ones who don't want to be." Which of course connotes that there are people who arguably enjoy the act. "We make deals, we look for the ones causing trouble, or... the ones hunting us."

Miles didn't get to where he is now by being unable to read body language, and the way Maya had been so guarded seemed to indicate that she'd been expecting far more of a...prosecutorial reaction from him. As though he doesn't know what it's like to live with a heavy burden of guilt that you're terrified of being punished for, so you punish yourself for it instead.

The ones who don't want to be.. That doesn't escape his notice, either. He's not surprised that there are some who enjoy the power and enjoy the killing. He'd meant what he'd said earlier about knowing monsters. It's just that here the people like that seem to be more literal.

"I assume that some of the hunters are the ones who were patrolling the beach."

"Well, they might be," Maya notes, "But I think most of them are just people who think they can stop us before we start."

They're wrong, of course, and Maya remembers just how wrong they are.

"Those guys just protect their land, and some of them aren't even nice to other humans, to be honest," she continues, "but the poachers are.. worse. I can't tell if they want us gone, or... if they want to be us."

Maya's hand slides up from her chest to just under her neck, where one grey-white band runs through the orca-black.

When Maya reaches for the mark cutting through the black of her skin - something he's still trying to adjust to - he realizes with a sickening lurch that it's something that was done to her, not part of her transformation. The rest of what she said is filed away. He'll ask about it in a minute. This is more important right now.

"Who did this?" he asks, his voice quiet, the anger in it tempered and controlled. There aren't many people in the world who he considers to be close friends - six, perhaps - but those people are his, and if they are in danger of being hurt or killed he will do everything in his power to save them. He flew halfway across the world to help Phoenix Wright, risked his career by masquerading as a defense attorney, investigated the scene where Misty Fey's body had been positioned in a desperate attempt to do something, anything, while Maya had been trapped across the Eagle River.

He's not going to lose another person close to him. Not again. Not if he can help it.

Maya's quieter about this reaction than she was before. Another breath, another sigh, and her shoulders fall.

"This is why I hoped you'd never show up," she near-whispers, fingers tracing over the mark. It's her fault he's noticed; it's her fault she wears it practically like a necklace. She'd always assumed that if she wore it with pride, the poachers could never have power over her despite what they'd done. It was a reminder of having protected her friends.

But to her old friends, it would be something different.

"Here, in this world, monsters can't really die," she admits, shaking her head. "Not for real. Not like it should be. So I'm okay. I really am."

For a given measure of "okay", of course. She's alive.

"But there are people who want things from us-- poachers. Not.... They're not people whose families someone ate, or, anything like that. It's like they want pieces of us."

He can read between the lines.

"A poacher," he says, far too calmly. "A poacher...killed you?" Impossible. But then again, very possible. God damn it, someone did this to her, tried to take something from her. Maybe succeeded.

It hadn't been in his control, but it should have been. He clenches a fist, almost without realizing.

"Whichever bastard did this," he says, "I hope for their sake that they're dead." There's a cold anger flaring up in his stomach. He's not given to physical revenge, but he's sure not above making someone's life hell within the bounds of the law. Whatever the law consists of here. "Properly so. And I'm glad that you're still with us, however it happened."

"Well, the, uh, good news is... he and his buddy probably blew up," Maya replies, tugging at one of the bang-tails of her hair, the baubles replaced with sea shells. "Not by us, they kinda. I think they messed up their own research."

It's not something Maya would normally be pleased by in the slightest, but back in their world, poachers didn't steal larynxes or hands or eyes.

"The force that turns us all into monsters is the Fog-- some kind of 'god'," she explains further, at this point so rehearsed in giving out this information that she doesn't even pause to have a moment or anything. "She's the reason we come back to life, too. I don't know if the poachers just don't know, or... if they just wanted to scare us when they killed us, but... We're still here."

And now for the question he keeps stopping short of asking, because he's reasonably sure that he won't like the answer:

"You keep saying 'us'," he says cautiously. And that's all. He knows there are other monsters, given what she's said, but if she's just going to confirm that rather than what he thinks she's implying...

...he hopes she's just going to confirm that, really. Because he doesn't like the implication.

"Um-- well, there's a lot of monsters here!" Maya answers, throwing her hands up defensively despite.... not really needing to. There's just something cautious about how he's saying it that makes Maya slightly afraid if she should mention just who has died with her, and reminds her that she should definitely never mention how her kelpie best friend once horse-kicked her in the lungs.

"A lot of us got captured that time, annnnnd someone else was killed along with me," she admits. "But like I said, it's no big deal! Everyone who got killed there came back."

Not.... less alarming, actually.

"Maya," he says after putting all of that into the back of his head to ask about later, because this was currently his overriding concern.

"You keep saying 'us'," he says again, a little more urgently. "Does 'us' include..." He clears his throat, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice as best he can. "Does 'us' include 'me'?"

And after he'd only recently been able to convince himself he's not so monstrous after all.

Edited 2020-05-25 02:05 (UTC)

She frowns immediately, a bigger confirmation than anything she could say.

"well.... yeah," She replies nonetheless, browspots knitting together. What did he think he'd ended up in another world for?

Of course, she's just a smidge too compassionate to outright say it that way.

"That's... why we-- why anyone shows up here."

Just like that, something seems to snap in him - the last gasp of a load-bearing cable, like an elevator in freefall.

He hunches over, his eyes haunted, staring at nothing. The whys and the wherefores don't matter right now. What matters is the death sentence that Maya's just handed down, because he'd rather die than become on the outside what he is on the inside, and damn it, he'll figure out a way to make that stick if he has to.

There's not a lot that Maya can do at first; she recognizes that look, or at least she thinks she does, and she doesn't like it. But what comforts can she offer? She's been here three years, and it's very hard for Maya not to fall into the "this might be forever" camp. What can Maya truly say?

Welcome to hell?

She takes in a breath, holds it, then exhales.

"So, is that a 'this is the end of the world' face or a 'I'm not going to turn into something as cool as a werewolf' face?" asks Maya, in an attempt to jar Edgeworth out of his stupor with a familiar mood.

"It really isn't, you know. There's a lit we're trying to do to make things better. ...And you'll probably end up with something at least a little bit cool."

The attempt at levity forces a smile out of him - although it's more like a grimace, really.

"I don't..." Miles stops himself. I don't know if I can deal with this is something he shouldn't say. Not in front of someone who's dealt with so much more here and seems to have come to terms with it. With her own death, even. I don't know if you understand is something he shouldn't say, because she's one of the few people who does. She'd gotten as deep into the swamp of DL-6 as Wright had, and she'd been accused of murdering her own sister (and prosecuted by him, no less!), and she'd been kidnapped and possessed by a murderer, and...

...if anyone would understand how he felt about this, it's her.

"'End up with'?"

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missleadingquestions - 2020-05-27 03:42 (UTC) - Expand

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TEST DRIVE MEME: MAY/JUNE

I WHEEZE LAUGHED LIKE SOMEONE HIT ME IN THE GUT

I'M SO GLAD

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human beings? rational actors? /laughs in econ

Especially not those ace Attorney beings

if your mom named you some of the names in this series you'd be irrational too

completely true. at least they're some of the fortunate ones and not.... luke atmey

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cw: vague suicidal ideation THIS GOT REAL DARK REAL QUICK

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