cyan_maid | Victory Road IC Inbox

Then I leave it in your capeable hands! :B

Easier gift to deliver. But have a package for Christmas, housemate.

Inside in an interesting cook book, some pokemon treats and a board game. It’s the pokemon version of Scattergories.

A package arrives on Christmas Eve labeled from Lust, containing a boxed set of vaguely fantasy books featuring the adventures of a Clefairy princess who runs away from the moon to have adventures across the regions. Merry Christmas, Jane!

[The Pidgey is sent back after a little bit, after making sure the package it carries back is secure! Within Lust will find:

- A tin of gingerbread cookies

- A lovely notebook for Lust to write down anything she may have to write down.

- A cute winter hat! It's likely Lust has a winter hat, but this one is pretty and also it's nice to get new ones.]

[There's totally a delighted squeal from Jane when she finds the Scattergories, but hey, Alex, guess what's in this awesome bag for you?

- A handmade geode bathbomb from the Christmas Market, because these are cool as heck

- An Eevee patterned tin of ornament-shaped sugar cookies, each decorated differently and whimsically

- A punchy, funny semi-memoir of a trainer who's learned to get along with their strange tendency to collect Ghost Pokemon despite their intense dislike/mild fear of them that may have some bits Alex can relate to

Not doing the voice mail thing.

Call me.

Give me a good reason why I should.
After all, you've made what you think of me crystal clear.

Edited 2019-06-17 01:38 (UTC)

[He knew this was a possibility; he's . So he throws her a bone.

The next message is a short video file.

There he is. Dirk Strider. Looking... well, older. He always had an angular face, but the softness he was already losing as a teen is gone now, leaving him practically all angles around his big nose and heavy brows. Light brown skin marked with lighter, whiter lines where incidental injuries became incidental scars. There are a lot more of those.

He's got a little white-blond scruff on his chin, though whether that's habitual or just a side effect of a week spent travelling between towns is unclear.

His sunglasses look exactly the same, fit his face exactly the same.

He sets his mouth into a flat line the same, too, and carries his tension in his jaw the same. A perfect mask of control, hiding the shattered mess of razor-edged fragments he's holding together through sheer will just inches behind it. He could be about to break (he's not; he doesn't break), and far as she'd know, he's perfectly composed.]

Let's play a game. You take my call, I let you ask me a question. Any question. And assuming you don't ask me for Skaia's winning lotto numbers, I'll answer it. No strings attached, one hundred percent honesty. How's that sound to you?

[Pivoting to video is a calculated move on his part; show her his face, force her to see him as a person, make her look at the ways he's changed. The emotional appeal, the subconscious ties between seeing more of someone and thinking you have access to more of them, the false notion of intimacy.

His offer is also a calculated move. He doesn't even try to tug on her heartstrings; whatever heart she has is ruled by her head. Jane wants answers. He has most of them, if not literally all of them. And none of the questions she could ask him are worth playing coy about.]

Edited 2019-06-17 02:21 (UTC)

[She doesn't grant him the same courtesy.

At least, not yet. No, Jane is going to take her time in responding, because she's been back home for a full day now, and has had time beyond that to think and reflect, to internalize advice. And she wasn't expecting him to even attempt to reach out, honestly. It catches her a little off-guard, but whatever part of this she can have a handle on, she's going to keep it, and right now that's in text responses.

Dirk may say this is a no-strings-attached arrangement, but he has always been about pulling those strings. She knows this, and it grates on her nerves to know he could be using this against her, to make her hurt. The fact that he's significantly older than her is also kind of wild? As if, here's proof of a life beyond Sburb, one much longer than nineteen years old - something she was convinced wasn't possible. That, in itself, is both answer and question.

Come on, now. There's only so much time you have to think on it, Jane, before he starts to get impatient and cranky.]

While I won't deny your offer is a tempting one, Mister Strider, you'll have to understand - and I'm sure you DO understand, with your conglomerate smart boy brain - that I am a bit skeptical considering our most recent exchange.
First of all, it would be silly of you to offer something to me without expecting something in return. If this is truly a game to you, then there has to be some sort of reciprocation on my part, right? You pass the ball to me, I pass the ball to you? Or else it's less of a game and more someone kicking the ball against a wall.
Second, you've made it perfectly clear that I cannot trust you!
Whether or not the things you say are absolutely true, how can I take your word for it after you were so rude to me?
Bias is also a form of lying, and I get the sense that you have oodles of bias.
Now, if you contacted me just to watch me be upset, then you could have just said so plainly; both my Ninetails have decided to have eggs with my Zoroark, who has shapeshifted into a little human boy to tell me I'm now a grandmother. Surely that's enough to satiate your thirst for my despair, isn't it?

[Look she was planning on making a network post about all these eggs anyway, she didn't trust Hughie not to burst in yelling MY MOM IS A GRANDMOTHER NOW]

[It's bad enough when she's just peppering him with her repetitive bullshit, but then she starts veering steeply off topic and it does his already-strained nerves absolutely no favours.

He doesn't send another video file. She got her taste. If she wants him to talk face to face, person to person, he needs to see her fucking face first.]

That's a lot of questions you just asked.

And yet I don't think any of them are the one you want me to answer.

I'm being nice by letting you go first. I didn't have to do that. I still don't. But I do need you to listen to me.

Let's call the ball the other person's undivided attention. You have the ball, you have me as your captive audience. Those are the rules. Easy enough.

The answers I'm offering are something like a handicap. You're at a pretty big disadvantage here, after all.

No one likes a sore winner.

Oh criminy.
See that, right there? "Sore winner"? I'm not about to play a game with you if you want to talk seriously!
It really can't be satisfying to "win" if you're supposedly the king of the mountain already, can it?
If I ask you questions, you're getting something out of answering them. I wasn't born yesterday.

So the only winning move is not to play, is that what you're saying?

Guess that makes you the winner, then. Are you happy with that outcome? If so, congratulations. We have nothing more to talk about.

If not, then I have bad news for you.

You lose.

I was trying to do something nice here, out of the goodness of my nonexistent heart. This is incredibly frustrating for me too, you know. I may be heartless, but I'm not a sadist. If you're willing to cut off your nose to spite your face, that's not my problem. But don't say I didn't try.

No, I...
Maybe I haven't been clear. I will state it plainly:

Dirk, I do not want to play any sort of game in order to talk to you like a person.

That is my thesis statement. Feeling like you're trying to get something out of it by framing a conversation AS a game is supporting evidence. Additionally - and I will offer this freely - perhaps I might not want to know anything about a potential future that, until a couple of weeks ago, I never thought possible to exist for me? One that's obviously had a profound influence on you for the negative to boot.

[She almost adds, "And I don't want to know about the concept of a Jane that I can't be" before backspacing, and then sends it. It's already enough of a whammy to say "yeah no I don't want to know about my shitty future", if he insists on pretending this is a game some more he can use that however he likes. She'll give it to him for free.]

[There is a long delay before Jane gets her reply.

It's a lot like opening the lid on a garbage can that's been sitting in the heat for days, meat trimmings and old concert diapers ripening under the sun--a repulsive scent that clears you of any thought, any sensation except disgust.

What the fuck is he even doing? Other than making a spectacular and sloppy mess of this... this, whatever this is, the gratuitous climax of this autocopulatory nightmare. A genuine reality bukkake. That. Whatever the fuck it was supposed to be to begin with.

~~Don't think about that, don't picture it, not now, not right fucking now~~

Focus.

What, exactly, did he think he was doing?

What was the point, other than a pathetic attempt to convince himself he was wrong? That the Muse hadn't uncoupled him not only from the narrative but severed him fully from the tether of reality, and with it cut off any connection he had to canon.

He could still convince himself that he wasn't losing his mind, all of his mind, still just barely cohesive after the polyfragmentation process, now no longer connected to the one thread that kept him whole... he could do that, but what was the fucking point?

He'd gone into this with a plan, hadn't he?]

No shit. I don't know you. I don't know how to talk to you. I don't know what you want.

So maybe give me an ounce of fucking credit and trust that I'm being sincere when I ask: who are you accusing of being a person? Fuck, what is a person? That isn't a hypothetical question, by the way, it's a real issue for me right now. Because speaking of real: this place isn't.

It's out of character, I know, but I was actually hoping to avoid this whole dramatic reveal I'm doing now, this stream-of-bullshit-consciousness I'm going to hit Enter on and deliver to your inbox against my better judgment. Because nothing I say means anything to you. Not that it matters. That doesn't matter. Nothing fucking matters! Do you halfway understand that?

I'm putting this out into the world (that isn't fucking real) as an act of desperation.

But there is an infinitesimally slim chance that doing so will set into motion something actionable. Anything. I don't even care what it means, just so long as it fucking works. This isn't irrelevance, this isn't dubious authenticity, it's the absence of anything at all. Even infinite meaninglessness is still infinity, so if Paradox Space existed, there should be infinity there. And it's not.

And that means I'm not just out of the story. I'm out of reality. There is a non-zero chance that I am no longer real.

So this better fucking work.

[That's

Boy, that's a lot of words and sentences that sure do say a bunch of things. Jane takes the time to read the message through at least thrice, but her eyes keep catching on the same words.

And they get her to turn the video on.]

Dirk...[Her voice is soft, hesitant, her brow furrowed with concern. There's a lot of hurt in her eyes, yes, not the pitying kind but the reared back, cautious kind of someone expecting a fight - none of that has left her since they first spoke. Not really. She pauses, swallows, tries again.]

...No. I know I don't know you, either. That's very obvious. But whatever you had become back home, [whatever a conglomerate of selves even is,] that's...I don't want to say "not you anymore", because that'd be foolish. But...you're a person. [She presses a hand to her chest.] I'm a person. We and everyone else who's been brought here, and yes, even the natives to this place, are people. And despite the fact that this world is a game, that doesn't make it any less real. That doesn't invalidate what's happening right now, because it's happening and will happen and has happened. Real is one of those things that's somewhat intangible...

[It's a concept, it's not something you can hold in your hand and bend to your will.]

You're...are you...um...[What's the word? What's the - oh, right,] Are you dissociating right now?

[A tender edge pokes through her voice despite the mask of bitterness. Do you need help?]

[The thing about not having a breakdown is it can feel exactly like having a breakdown. If he didn't know the difference, he'd sure fucking think things were at the breaking point. He's breathing weird. It's something to be aware of here. How can his mind be so overloaded and yet so empty at the same time? But he's not having a breakdown. Because he doesn't break. The difference is in whether or not you have control. Whether or not you let it go off the rails. This train might be on fire, multi-track drifting with no brakes, but it hasn't jumped the tracks. No matter how bad shit gets, or how cataclysmic the situation, he stays frosty. He's fine.

And now she calls him back. Incredible. He has enough presence of mind to be petty, at least after the picosecond of surprise has passed.

Well, he did what he came here to do. Not as elegantly as he'd like, but he got it done. They can't all be winners. He'll even admit that the way it went down is either pretty annoying or pretty embarrassing, but the latter is only possible if he has a sense of shame. Fortunately for him, he does not.

Now a pointless replica of Jane is accusing him of being mentally disturbed. It would actually be pretty funny if he wasn't forced to interact with her for the sake of getting shit done. As it is, it's just sort of insulting, which is another way to say annoying. Which is a good distraction from the current meta-real existential crisis he's uncorked, a temporeal emergency flowing too fast and too STRONG to put the stopper back into. So he decides to focus on that. Maybe have a little fun with it. Maybe just shut her down.]

No.

I am not dissociating. That's a pretty fucked up thing to suggest, actually. Or it would be if I had been talking to you.

Imagine if I'd actually wanted your help, and your first impulse is to tell me it's all in my head? Which it is, in a strictly literal sense. I'm not saying it isn't. My head is the only one with a brain capable of perceiving, let alone comprehending, the evidence of reality that I'm currently attempting to manipulate into proving its continued existence.

Anyway, it's been fun, but I don't see this going anywhere now, so I'm cutting this off before you get too invested.

Goodbye, Jane.

[hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-]

...Ah, there you go again, implying I'm dumb and pointless, and that coming to me demanding to speak with me, texting me back and forth, isn't an attempt at communication. Right, sure. I'm just going to ignore my basic common sense on that one, of course.

[She's. Honestly, really sort of worn out, trying to keep up with Strider Mental Gymnastics (tm), and nothing he's said isn't something he hasn't implied previously, so it doesn't trigger her temper.]

[To some, communication is an ideal. For him, it's a tool.

Like this extraneous Jane that's been limping along somewhere beyond canon for three goddamn years. He can't bring himself to care about her, even if he wanted to. He's stopped just short of saying so in those words, but he can only tell her how little she matters here so many times before it becomes painfully obvious it's not sticking.

He's so incredibly tired and so goddamn fucking wired; hearing just how transparent that is only intensifies it, both the wash of feverish energy and intense feverlike drain. Her inevitable belligerence is one thing, but ignoring his direct message (Goodbye, Jane) in favour of digging for some secret message buried between the lines is toeing the absolute limit of his patience.

So much for doing her a favour.

The kicker is that he'd tried her idea of 'communication' for a while, having been sold on the idea of it as a necessary part of bettering himself as a person. Asking for help. Admitting to personal struggle. That kind of thing. It made sense at the time. But it turned out that the merits of sharing his 'sincere' feelings depended on a whole mess of assumptions. Assumptions that were proven false by a fast-growing body of evidence.

He'd never been able to ignore the facts, unlike some people.

And the truth was this: it encouraged the worst in him. When he wasn't humiliating himself both in public and in private to retain Jake English's frivolous loyalties, he was making a spectacle out of himself over some pathetic melodrama. Eventually he'd understood: no matter your intentions, yanking people around only works when you don't do it out in the open.

So telling people the truth didn't work out for him. Some truths are just too unpalatable.]

[There is no response.]

[That's fine. That's fine. This is fine. Totally fine. It's fine.

She sends him a picture file later, though, but no text.]

They probably do an actual celebration! But also, this has been a busy couple of months and John doesn't have that much money this Christmas as a result. So Jane gets a bunch of detective novels he didn't see when searching the house, and a Detective Pikachu pin he found because holy crap that's cute?

He feels a little bad he can't match Jane for sheer thoughtfulness this year but at least he has the remainder of his shortbread cookies to casually offer her for the next few weeks until they're gone.

GOD........JANE LOVES THEM......she's going to pin that pin on like, lapels of collared shirts or near the collar of cardigans - she's going to find excuses to wear it on things and read those books gleefully.

Hey.

Had any thoughts about that dollhouse yet? If not, I encourage you to put some time aside for that. If you have, don't be shy about spitballing in my vicinity. I made it more of an intuitive, free-association concept piece for you, so don't try to overthink it.

But if you've got a moment, I got another puzzle for you.

[I've attached a video. It's out in the weeds, off path at the park so no one sees this thing. "This thing," such as it is, looks something like this, and is just floating there, suspended approximately two centimetres off the ground. Its flat, glassy fish eyes stare out of its expressionlessly bony face.

I walk up to it, slap the broad palm of my hand against the side of its big head, and it "swims" upwards, slowly, eventually doing a full loop-the-loop but not really going anywhere.]

What the shitting fuckload is this.

I might be poking around it and keeping notes when I have the chance.
Nothing's really conclusive yet.

Oh, except this.

[Attached is a picture of Dinah playing with the dolls...she's figured out that you can pose them to be on hands and knees. The Jane doll is doing so to the Dinah doll, and she's showing it to that navy-colored, similar Pokemon. Deva, her name was. Deva looks unimpressed.

It's probably some kind of weird explanation about who's in charge of who, heavily skewed to Dinah's perspective.]

This is a little weird and frankly the only thing I'll be commenting on until I've drawn up a hypothesis. My comment is: why?

Oh my God what the actual heck IS that????????
Is it okay? Lordy, how does that fish even eat? Is its mouth on top of its head???
Is that a real Pokemon or are you trying to pull a fast one on me?

Just a guess, but that looks more like a question for Dinah.

Keep me posted.

I'm genuinely curious to see what you come up with.

Anyway, I thought the bitmunous segway cyclops I hatched was a stretch, but this place keeps upping the ante. I've just been dropping some dehydrated nutrient blocks into its mouth from above, frankly. Seems to work out okay, and obviously I've seen weirder, but I could barely get the Pokedex to tell me what Types it was.

If we could abstain from calling the situation "fishy," I will admit there's something off about this thing. You've been here awhile, so I thought maybe you could shed some light on it, but I guess not.

[Fuck.

After a few seconds, I add:]

Don't tell anyone about this.

Victory Road IC Inbox

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Christmas 2018

Christmas Pidgey Post!

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[LOCKED][Text with Video] Forward dated to... eh, February 28?

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