reallybadeggs | Test Drive for January 2014 Apps

Entry tags:

test drive

Test Drive for January 2014 Apps

Welcome to your monthly Test Drive for

high_seas! Here is where new players can test out their characters' voices, old players can try out new muses, and everyone can help each other get some threads for their applications! Feel free to use one of the prompts below, or come up with something on your own! Comment around, have fun, and remember that any CR formed here does not carry over to the game!

See you during the application round!

♦ So you're new to this world and have just woken up in the Town Square. How do you react? What do you do?

♦ You're lost at sea. Maybe you got separated from your crew. Or perhaps you're on an abandoned island. You need help!

♦ "Pirates off the starboard bow!" It's an enemy ship! Attack!!

♦ You and your crew are hanging out on your ship. Just another day at sea!

♦ "LAND, HO!" Hey look, a new island! How about you go explore it? Tell us what you find!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Everything Sakura knew about her village seems to fray and crack. While she could quietly admit to herself that she couldn't understand Sasuke, she had thought she could count on her village and on her knowledge. One of Sakura's greatest strengths was her mind -- not only for intelligence but for her willpower.

It was't her fault though. The village had hidden that secret from not only her, she's sure. But Naruto knew about it, didn't he? And Kakashi-sensei. Everyone but her, and not until now. Perhaps it was better she heard it from Sasuke because she's not sure she would believe it from anyone else. They weren't as involved as Sasuke.

She doesn't know what to say. What do you say to someone when their clan, their family is the one to decide to ruin themselves? She never knew what to say to Sasuke before. What do you say to that misery?

Naruto would understand. He understood the agony of being ostracized like the Uchiha were. He was a jinchuriki, people feared and hated him too.]

Why didn't Itachi talk to your mother and father? Why didn't he try to stop it?

[Months here and a path of destruction in their own world have passed between learning the truth and now, and he'd thought he was used to it -- that it was something he'd grown accustomed to waking up with, as he had with the fact of the massacre with time. With Itachi here, as young as he is, it's even more a daily reminder that his brother made his choices and they're in the past, that this is something Sasuke can act upon but not change. That what he needs is the willpower to destroy and remake anew and the strategy to do so, and being trapped here is just another interlude of time to grow inured to the fact.

But something about Sakura's plain shock, the innocence of her questions, touches a nerve. Perhaps there is no accusation in her tone; perhaps he's hearing more than what is there, but he's turned on her abruptly, voice a snarl, eyes sharp with anger, and when he speaks it's -- it's not entirely to her.]

Do you think I know those answers? Do you imagine he's kept me updated all this time on his reasons?!

He was a child in ANBU and he wanted no more of war. What the village did to our clan -- what it made my brother do to our family -- but you would have had us bow our heads and take whatever the Hokage chose to bring upon us. Your precious Konohagakure was kept safe from the consequences of its actions by hosing down its streets with Uchiha blood, and you ask me why Itachi didn't stop it a different way?

[She backpedals a step, more out of surprise than fear. She's never been afraid of Sasuke per say. But she couldn't say he didn't worry her. She listens to him and it's the most she's really heard about it.

Her brows had been drawn high but they drop down slowly, eyes narrowing.]

I wouldn't have had your clan do that!! [Because of what it had done to Sasuke.

She had said it was better to die fighting than do nothing at all. Was it true for this? She really doesn't know how to fix this, or make Sasuke not hate Konoha (or the shinobi world) for doing what it had done to his family. If Naruto were here he would--

But he's not. It's up to her to help him. She had said she wasn't going to depend on him anymore but it was so hard when he was always there. She wishes he was, selfishly.

But she doesn't know what she would do. It's there in her face as she tries to think of something, anything else that would have been better.]

[She wouldn't, she claims, and Sasuke -- wonders when he reached the point that he wants to scoff at that, at the attempt to cling to some higher ideal. Part of Konohagakure grows aboveground, and the rest of it tunnels in darkness. More than ROOT, more than Danzo, until the Hokage's office is planted firmly at the base of the lie, the bright pretty reputation of being a peaceful village a veneer over truth.]

You say that. [He has no doubt many have said that, the First being -- the first, and through the succession.] I trusted the Third, too.

[It's the first he's admitted to that. The Third had been kind to him when he'd been alone. There had been a time when he'd mourned the man, genuinely, a childish grief amplified by the weight of sombre black around him.

And then he'd betrayed the Third's memory, and then he'd learned that he'd been betrayed by the Third long ago. But Sasuke didn't raise the dead to continue to tear the world apart on the strength of fury and vengeance. He'd wanted the truth, from every side he could hear it, and the truth was -- the truth, stark now that it's clear. He glares a moment longer, then forces himself to exhale, turn away from a target that knows nothing.]

Konohagakure was built on betrayal and blood from the start. Everything that has happened since has just been repetition.

[Did that mean he didn't trust her? Can she really blame him? She tried to kill him and he tried to kill her. Even after coming back to them in the war on his own, she's not sure what to do with him.

She doesn't know what to do with him here, either. They're on the same side, they're looking for the same thing. She wants things to be normal between them.

Everything he's been saying since she asked about Itachi just confuses her more and more. Finally, she can't take being silent.]

What are you talking about?

[He's said too much, maybe, but he's also past the point of lying, and withholding information is just part of the cycle, isn't it? Still, he starts walking again before responding, heading towards the market, mentally ticking off -- hardtack, citrus, anything that won't spoil without refrigeration at sea for weeks.

When he speaks again, his voice is even, controlled:]

I was the one who brought the Hokage back. [Well, technically Orochimaru, but the man is practically Sasuke's responsibility for unleashing upon the world again.]

They were able to tell a much more detailed version of Konoha's history than we learned in school.

[She isn't sure if she should follow him but she does. She needs to know this. Maybe it would explain everything up until now when it came to Sasuke. All the HeelFaceTurns and such.]

Sasuke brought them back? Sasuke even knew the Edo Tensei? She had disliked the nature of that jutsu, even while Kabuto had done it. She still doesn't care for it much but she couldn't deny that it's helped them recently in the war.]

And that history isn't as clean as we were led to believe?

[What the hell is she SUPPOSED to believe in anymore?]

[More HeelFaceTurns than even Sasuke can keep track of himself, and even now he can't claim to be on anyone's side so much as his own, determined to prevent his own history from repeating on an endless loop. He'll die first, and he won't have left family behind to avenge him, but there will be others who perpetuate it.]

Konoha was built on alliance between the First's clan and Madara's. They'd spent generations killing each other, and then they expected harmony.

When they didn't get it, the Senju found ways to enforce it.

[She already knew that Konoha was built on the First's and Madara's coming together as clans to become village. She didn't know about their bloody history. A history that turned into Konoha's.

The Senju was the First's clan, if she was reading/remembering correctly. If there was no harmony, weren't both clans to blame?]

--By separating the Uchiha?

By trapping us in the village, then isolating us. [The answer is quick -- but he sighs, after a moment, shoulders hunching a bit:]

The clan was too slow to act at times, and too quick to offense at other times. [His father had seemed proud of their role in the village, but he's learned that the father he'd known had been the bare reflection of one fact of the man Fugaku had been, and his mother ...

Itachi had spoken of it with pride, too, the precinct and the compound cobbled together at the edge of the village, walled away.]

There was too much to forgive.

[Sakura's hand reaches for his shoulder but pauses, dropping back to her side and curling in a fist. She stares at the ground and directs her question there too.]

You didn't know about any of this when you were growing up, did you? That your clan-- that your mother and father, even Itachi, felt this way.

[She looks now to Sasuke for an answer. If there was too much to forgive then...]

Why do you want to be Hokage now?

I was a child. [And thought and acted like one, unlike Itachi who had seen through the illusion that was the peace; the burden that had fallen on his brother's shoulders, that he had been unwilling to share.] I knew nothing.

[That question isn't unexpected, but to have to say it out loud is -- to have to justify himself at all is new, and it's discomfiting. He takes a moment to order into words that particular determination that had taken form after combining all the truths he's known -- the sense of duty, something like --]

I have to. I have to right the wrongs of the people who came before us. I've seen the cycle, and I can break it.

[None of them knew anything when they were children. They thought they did but the reality was much more complex. Even now, Sasuke was telling her things she didn't know. She feels naive and young. She feels like a child again.

There's something familiar about those words and that attitude, like she's heard it before. ~~Or maybe she hasn't i'm dumb and too lazy to look up if Naruto has mentioned BREAKING THE HATE CYCLE to Sakura~~

Some of the tension, preparing for his answer, leaves her body.]

I don't think that's what being Hokage is about, Sasuke-kun. [Not that his ideas are necessarily bad. Not that that didn't need them. They're a hell of a lot better than what they were LAST she saw of him and that's why she's a little relieved.]

And Naruto still wants to be Hokage. He won't let you have it so easily. [AND SHE WAS TEASING WHEN SHE SAID SHE WAS GOING TO STEAL THAT SEAT FROM UNDER THEIR NOSES because it was the middle of the war and she was just glad to have Team 7 back together and to be standing beside them. If they could become Hokage, then she could too.]

But I still think I have a better chance than you two.

[He raises an eyebrow at her response -- it's certainly less of a fight that he'd expected, given that announcing it in the middle of a battlefield left very little time for more detailed explanation of his motives or any answer to it.]

I'm not trying to continue what being Hokage has been about before now. I'm trying to build something new.

[But the tensions seems lessened, somehow, enough that his mouth twitches very slightly when she brings up Naruto, giving an appropriately dismissive snort. It's true that claiming the same goal is perhaps a direct challenge to Naruto's dreams and what he stands for, but he has fought against less worthy opponents before, even if he's unlikely to ever admit that out loud.

And Sakura would have as solid a claim as either of them. Or rather, for more than he might, and as the Godaime's apprentice and without the stigma of a tailed beast.]

I've never paid attention to the odds when it comes to my goals. I'll take you on.

[Sakura doesn't really want to fight Sasuke. Not seriously, that is. Not about this anymore because he has given her a lot to think about. Her fall back is teasing and smiling and pretending things are okay.

Ahhh, there's the Sasuke she knows. She can't stop her own small smile or the wish that said Naruto was here with her and Sasuke to see them now.

Nobody on Team 7 paid attention to the odds. They overcame everything with sheer willpower.]

I told Naruto before so I'll tell you now. I'm not a weak woman.

I'm the Fifth's disciple.

[And nothing scares me. ~~Except maybe my teammates dying ahahahahaaaaaa...;;;;~~

This is just fun banter anyway -- something she never really got with Sasuke.]

That'll be part of the challenge, then.

[He doesn't expect it in the least, not with Sakura, but something about this kind of surface-level banter -- not addressing their actual chances, where they are right now, how likely they are to survive the war -- is oddly comfortable in a way they hadn't been even on Team 7.

They're older now, maybe that's why. Or they've seen more. Whatever the case, he looks away to hide the amusement on his own face under the pretense of scoping out the square again, eyeing the sign reading Backwater Brig speculatively.]

[Sakura's never been considered a challenge to Sasuke, he's never admitted it outloud. Rather, nobody has ever said that to her face. Her strength has been called insane and brutish. Pride swells in her and when he's not looking, she grins and her cheeks flush a little in happiness, in an unguarded and unrestrained moment. It reminds her of walking to the chunin exams and Sasuke believing her analysis has always been top notch on the team.

Eventually she follows his gaze and reads the sign too. The pride dies down to something a bit more tempered and not as visible anymore.]

Backwater Brig? Have you been there?

[He misses it -- he misses all of it, because ~~he's an idiot~~ he's looking at the sign and then off to the side a bit, calculating how much money he has left and whether it's enough to get at least another set of kunai even at Margie's cutthroat prices.

He's just decided that it's worth the gouging when Sakura speaks again, glancing back at her.]

That's the only place you can get weaponry here. It carries things from our world somehow.

[~~The biggest idiot but we've established that~~

A journal that writes itself. A place that exists outside the plane of time of their own world. Their weapons somehow find a way to a shop onto this world. Something weird was going on here. Her eyes narrow on the sign.]

Is it only that place? Does it carry anything other than weaponry?

[She reaches into her holster, not in a hostile move. She still had a few kunai left from the war. And then she remembers her own meager funds that would find better use with food and shelter. She's not entirely opposed to 'roughing it' as Kakashi-sensei had said before, but she's been doing that for a few days now. A bed and a nice meal sounds like a dream, if she's stuck here with no way of getting home until a ruby was found. Also a bath, yes.

But it's a place to remember, if it had things she needed.]

[He's forcibly reminded of how many of his sentences were questions when he'd first arrived, but this place has a tendency to spawn questions. The answers tend to do so as well, in all honesty. He pushes the door to the shop open in lieu of answering at first -- the view of the wildly varied and confusing merchandise should answer her second question, at least.]

It's only this place.

And we're not told how it is they acquire what they have, either. [If he sounds distrustful -- it's because he is.]

[Definitely more than weaponry. She's a bit awed and curious at what some of this stuff is. More questions raise.

They're ninja, it's only natural to be suspicious of convenient things. She spots some kunai and wanders over, picking one up carefully and brushing a finger gently over the edge. Was there more from home?]

Probably similar to the same way we did. [Also sounds not happy.

She has a war to fight in thanks]

[Kunai, shuriken, the bitter awareness that the shopkeeper has his own damn sword in the back with the more expensive merchandise and is planning to charge him a mint for it. He may owe Margie for shoving him out of Isla Empieza when he first arrived, but she's a cutthroat businesswoman.]

They don't randomly appear by the fountain, though.

There's a lot we're not told, here. [If he shoots the shopkeeper a dirty look as he picks out a set of smaller weaponry, well. It's deserved.]

People have to make a living somehow.

[She shoots him a smirk over her shoulder as she says it before setting the kunai back in its place. It doesn't last, especially when he reminds her of how little information they had about this world. She moves over to peer at his selection, speaking in a lower tone.]

It's our job then as shinobi to gather information in other ways, right?

[It was a basic principle taught at the Academy. It was the purpose of the first test of the chunin exam. It would be too easy if everything was handed to them on a silver platter. That was no way to live. And while they didn't really belong here and they certainly had a war to fight, there was no point getting upset over it.

Not YET.]

[He just gives her a disgruntled look back at that smirk, because he's fairly certain that charging people for their own belongings is a racket that more than makes a living for the shopkeeper, but they don't have much choice beyond robbing the store, and Margie is too useful to lose her as a contact. Very much like their major source of information here, really.]

The civilians here are useless. [He dismisses them out of hand, mentally calculating how much money he has left.] The military is barely any better.

We need to target their top brass, but we've got to find them first.

[Sakura is silent in her musing, fiddling with a weapon at Sasuke's right idly.]

We need to find the ruby.

[If that meant finding the one in charge like Sasuke says, or going to every single island out there and the ones not.

They need to go home. Sakura couldn't shirk her responsibilities even if she was safe to enjoy the break (or so it seemed) of being away from war.]

By any means.

Test Drive for January 2014 Apps

NO PLS

YES SPRINGTIME IS SPANDEXTIME

NOO LMAO

LET IT CLING TO YOUR YOUTHFUL SKIN

BUT I LIKE SWEATS

SPANDEX ALSO GIVES YOU FREE MOVEMENT

SO Do SWEATS!!!

BUT SPANDEX IS MUCH MORE YOUTHFUL!!!!!!!!!!

nooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooOoOOoooOOO

YES SPANDEX WILL INCREASE YOUR YOUNG HIP ENERGY

BUT GAI HAS OLD HIPS AND HES OLD

HOW CAN YOU CALL HIS FLEXIBLE HIPS OLD

COS IM A BOSS

CAN YOU BOSS HIPS THAT DON'T LIE

MY BOSS HIPS RULE THOSE OLD HIPS

i'm a little troubled by this phrasing unless that is what you're into which no judgment

CRYING also WOW HAD TO DRAW THAT

OH MY GOD DIES YOUR ART IS FUCKING ADORABLE HER LITTLE NOSE AND CHEEKS

SHES SO HAPPY & I DO THINGS LIKE THIS AS A WARNING

THAT SOUNDS LIKE A WARNING FOR FUTURE DELIGHT

AFTERNOON DELIGHT

TURKISH DELIGHT?

now i'm think of lion witch and wardrobe. sasook you can be the wardrobe cos you have libido of one

so sakura is the witch and naruto is the lion or is it the other way round

no sakura needs to be the lion you're gonna hear her roooooaaaarrrr

is she gonna wear the tiger skirt outfit too

awheckyea

boom boom pow

gotta get that

they try to copy her swagger

TWO THOOUSAND AND LATE SASUKE

BUT HE GOT THE HIT THAT BEAT THE BLOCK?

SHOULD PROBABLY StOP COS IM IN GAME NOW LMAO

WELL yes maybe ;u; good night sweet thread