JANUARY - FEBRUARY TEST DRIVE MEME

[indigo_league]

➞ Post with a character you wish to test drive in this game's setting.
➞ Tag other people's starters and thread out shenanigans!
➞ Invite your friends! Try out new characters! Come play with us!
➞ Have fun!

NOT SURE WHERE TO BEGIN YOUR TEST-DRIVE JOURNEY?
CHECK OUT ALL THE LOCATIONS WE HAVE AVAILABLE IN:

JOHTO | and | KANTO

✭ ✭ ✭


OTHER USEFUL LINKS:
NAVIGATION | RESERVES | APPLICATIONS

Comments

Rose Marshall | Sparrow Hill Road

[roadsiderose]

[GOING MY WAY?] Someone who looks like a teenaged girl in an old fashioned, 1950s-era green silk dress is walking along the side of the road, her thumb out in the classical American signal for I need a ride.

Is it completely useless to walk down an unpaved road with her thumb out? Yes, yes it is. But Rose has been a hitchiker for sixty-odd years. This is what you do, when you're getting from place to place. She gravitates towards the right margin of the road and her left hand curls automatically, her thumb extends. If she hears someone about to pass she'll likely raise that arm all unthinking, then scowl at herself and make her hand relax, but as long as she's walking chances are her hand will return to that position.

The rangy Absol walking by her side glances over now and then, but it's a cool Absol who's absolutely, totally worldly and used to the things humans do, and not worried at all about what is and isn't normal. Totally.

MY STRANGE ADDICTION: To be a hitching ghost is to always be cold, always be hungry, always be touch-starved, except when given the chance to borrow a living person's coat and vitality and fill those cravings. Of course, that borrowed life lasts only until the next sunrise, and those needs resurface, but here none of the restrictions seem to apply.

Rose would love to fall on this basket of cheeseburger and fries like she's starving, but she's eaten four times today already and her fully physical, breathing body protests more. So she picks at her food, savoring the gritty salt overlaying the grease, nipping at a bit here and there and nursing multiple cups of diner coffee. Sometimes she looks up and delivers that same avaricious, speculative anticipatory look at people, though she always quickly smooths that expression from her face and just studies them through her eyelashes.

THIS ISN'T THAT KIND OF GAME: The problem with not resetting to intangible after a maximum of twenty four hours? Being alive is messy and complicated and you need constant maintenance to keep your appearance nice, maintenance which Rose has fallen kind of out of practice with, though she's aware of how she should look, and smell for that matter. She rolls up into town with her hair an unwashed, fingercombed mess, stains and tears on her dress, old makeup smeared on her face, and Absol politely but very pointedly staying upwind.

"Who does a girl have to blow to get a shower around here?" she demands. Language, Rose!

Going my way.

[gonebyebye]

The next person to come down the road is a man in a desert tan flight-suit with a No-Ghosts patch sewn into the shoulder. He's followed, almost orbited, by a Rotom, who he seems to be chatting animatedly with, even if only one of them can speak in a language the other finds intelligible.

"Is everything alright, ma'am?" Ray says, spotting Rose along the side of the road. "I don't think you're going to find too many vehicles on this road, but if you need to get somewhere quickly we can probably call someone."

[roadsiderose]

Recognizing that she had her thumb out again, Rose's hand pats against her side, trying to hook or dip into the pocket or belt loop on the kinds of clothing she normally manifests for herself, finding nothing but slick green silk. Of course, she doesn't know just how those fashions went after she died, but certainly in 1952 no one put pockets on a prom dress.

Rose blinks wide eyes at Ray, falling back into the long-practiced persona of a young woman more hopeful than anything. Certainly not annoyed with herself and the situation. "Oh, I don't know! I've been walking for hours and I don't know how far it is to the next town! Absol is a dear but is just as clueless as I am."

She can't tell now if Ray's a real, living person, but if she could she'd register some disappointment; people don't shrug out of flightsuits to lend to hitchhikers. Not that that's a concern. This place seems to have lent her life without having to borrow it from kind strangers. The patch doesn't worry her too much. When she has this semblance of life there's very little anywhere that can tell she's dead.

[gonebyebye]

"Judging by the map on this device, it's still a couple of days out. Faster if you can find a Pokémon to ride, but unfortunately I haven't seen anything that size on this route." He says, glancing around as if to see if he might have been wrong about that.

"I'm Dr. Ray Stantz," he adds, holding out a hand to shake, "Just Ray is fine. The little orange entity here is Sparks the Rotom."

[roadsiderose]

"Oh... the device..." she says, and there's no acting needed to put an uncertain falter into her voice. Rose is aware of the various handheld electronics that people have been carrying more and more advanced versions of in the past few decades, but they're totally outside of her experience. The place where she goes to rest is very much like the diners she knew in life, and people don't lend little glowing valuables to hitchhikers. If these things have souls, and anything can build a soul if loved for long enough, they aren't ones that talk to hers. She's learned to tell motorists her phone is broken or out of batteries and that's about it. "I don't know how to use that."

"Rose." She's more or less alive, here, and shakes his hand without hesitation. Her fingers are cold to the touch, as ever, but that's not so unusual among living people. "I don't know if Absol is sticking around for long enough to need a name yet." Names have power, and anyway in her experience she's never side by side with anyone for long.