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thenashira2025-12-02 08:56 pm
nashiramods) wrote in thenashira2025-12-02 08:56 pm
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Game Update: August II 2377
🎶 Recommended Listening: Answer - BUMP OF CHICKEN ♪
august ii 2377
EPISODE 8: When You Wish Upon a Spark...
August 16 - 31
NOTE: As a reminder, there will be no event or missions this month while the mod team takes a break. The game update contains prompts for all of August II, so play around to your heart's content!
Star Suite: The Training Room has been unlocked! Special training machines are now available to the Nova Knights, and they now have access to a new Star Suite power, Sparkle of Life. More details about this power are included in the Starlight section. The Rewards page has been updated with information about the next unlockable room, the Portal.
Constellations: 2/7 Constellations captured. The Nova Knights have the Dancer and the Three Sisters.
Weather: Chalra City's hot hot summer continues! While August isn't quite as hot as it was last month, it's a good deal more humid and stickier. Whether it's a swimming pool or a beach, Chalra City residents are flocking to the water to cool off and relax. Sunbathing in the park is a popular activity on cooler days, and local shops and restaurants court young shoppers by offering special services and sales suited to the student wallet. The highs for the month average around 90°F/32C° with lows around 78°F/25C°.
Recap: The Nova Knights got some badly needed wins in the first half of August! Not only did they rescue the Three Sisters from the Harbingers' clutches, but Dirk and Reese escaped from the Abyss more or less intact as well. They managed to foil most of the Harbingers' plans at Littleneck Beach, but the Harbingers got away with their stolen energy, and whatever they were harvesting from the folks consuming Potari Sweet. The Harbingers have since disappeared from Nautis's magical radar, however, suggesting that they're prioritizing their defenses over a proactive attack.
BY DAYLIGHT
⭐︎ Summer break is over — it's back to school for all students. Hope you did your summer homework, or at least copied it from someone else last minute!
⭐︎ As the summer swelters on, the Midnight Diner serves up a Chalra City summer favorite: finger food-sized fried chicken with a spicy yogurt dipping sauce known by locals as pieces and beach sauce. While beach sauce is typically associated with fried chicken, Chalra City residents will put it on just about anything, and everyone's got their own recipe. Master's beach sauce is known to pack a powerful chili kick.
⭐︎ Chalra City commemorates the end of the summer with a fireworks festival on the waterfront running from the 26th to the 28th. Chalra City's artisans take great pride in their craft, and they spend months preparing three consecutive nights of elaborate fireworks displays on the waterfront, each more fantastic than the last, leading up to a truly show-stopping finale on the evening of the 28th. The festival is only active at night, but much like the Smoketree Promenade's midsummer event, there are plenty of food stalls and street vendors to occupy people's time before the fireworks go off. Sparklers are a popular toy for children and adults alike!
In Chalra City, the fireworks festival is about more than just tasty food and spectacle — it's an important opportunity for community togetherness and gathering with friends and family. There's an enduring old custom in this part of Atlace of making wishes on fireworks — if you make a wish aloud as a firework goes off, it may come true, and conveniently, the noise of the fireworks drowns out all but shouting. Of course, most people will agree that it's just an old superstition, but sometimes you can hear a murmur of voices intermingled with the deafening pops and cracks, so perhaps some of the Chalra City folk are a little more superstitious than they'll readily admit. Everyone needs a little something to believe in.
And it wouldn't be a true Chalra City summer event without a little competition! On the evening of 27th, the festival holds a spicy food eating contest hosted by the celebrity comedian Wakaba. Contestants will be tasked with eating a variety of hot sauce-coated foods, with the spicy factor increasing with every round; in between rounds, while the contestants take a brief breather, Wakaba asks them a variety of personal questions, most of which inevitably end on a joke. While there is a small cash prize for winning the contest, the real incentive is bragging rights.
BY STARLIGHT
⭐︎ Hope's Prophecy: Thanks to their past life as a diviner for the Oracle, Hope may occasionally receive prophetic dreams that give the Knights a hint about what's to come. Hope did not have a prophetic dream this time around either, but there's always next time!
⭐︎ Hideout Status: The Aquarium has 20 new quartz shrimp in addition to the four goldfish! The massive tanks are still mostly empty, but it's a start.
The Training Room is now accessible! If you were expecting a classic gym experience, think again — rather than conventional workout equipment, the Training Room holds what appear to be a series of arcade machines with a decidedly Hassalean aesthetic. Apparently, this is how the Nova Knights in their past lives honed their skills! There are currently three working arcade-style workout machines in the Star Plus training series: Star Plus Blazer, a target practice game to help hone weapon proficiency; Star Plus Light Catcher, a Whac-a-Mole style game where you bop cute little star-shaped monsters; and Star Plus Beats, a drumming game with two large drums that helps with magic power circulation.
There are more workout machines, but the rest are all out of order...who knows, maybe you'll find a way to repair them someday!
⭐︎ Star Suite: Another Silver-level Star Suite power has been unlocked! The Nova Knights can now use Soul Flash, a Silver-level finishing move that cleanses ordinary people who have been temporarily possessed or changed by the Abyss. The overzealous beachgoers who had drunk Potari Sweet, for instance, would have been cured in an instant by Soul Flash!
Star Suite powers cannot be alone; they must be used in concert with at least one other Nova Knight, and the more Knights who participate, the stronger the attack. It can only be used once per supernova transformation. Characters in eclipse lose access to Star Suite powers for the duration of their eclipse.
⭐︎ Maomao's Garden: If Maomao has made any crucial progress, she hasn't shared it with anyone. Instead, she's just fully taken over the Lab and relocated the entire hydroponics garden there for better study. Trespassers will be hissed at.
⭐︎ Nautis Updates: Late in the evening of the 15th, Nautis informs everyone with unusual gravity that two more of their number have been claimed by the Abyss: Sunbeam and Crescent. As far as she can tell, they're not in one of the more surface-level pockets of the Abyss like the last few Nova Knights, but somewhere deep and as of yet unreachable like Nova Zenith. The Harbingers have gone to great lengths to hide themselves from Nautis, so it'll take time before she can find a way that deep into the Abyss. She urges everyone not to lose heart — their friends aren't dead, only captured, and the Nova Knights are coming for them.
> I know it's hard to think about having fun at a time like this, but...
> I just don't think it's good to dwell too long on what's already happened! You've got to take all that emotion and let it drive you forward! ( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ
> Besides, you know they wouldn't want you giving up at every setback! We'll prove their faith in us and rescue them for sure!
> So you have to make sure to take care of yourselves, OK?
> We've got some of the training machines up and running if you want to feel productive about your emotions ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧
> I hear this city's got some great fireworks...I know! You should all go take pictures for me! ^_^
> After all, it's not like I can go myself... Don't you want me to enjoy the fireworks? Don't I deserve to witness beauty too?
> I've been hard at work trying to put together what the Harbingers did to the Three Sisters and everything...
> The Constellation will recover, but yikes, those clowns really did a number on it. What they did was basically sacrilege! Don't they know these are precious artifacts of Hassaleh's Ocean Temple?!
> It really fries my circuits to see those good-for-nothing villainous losers abusing priceless pieces of our history (｡•̀ ⤙ •́ ｡ꐦ)
> The Constellations' magic was never meant to be used so directly...I don't think they have any idea what they were tampering with.
> Thank the stars they didn't! They could have done much worse than mess with some drinks. We can't let another Constellation fall into the Harbingers' hands again!
> But it seems like they're laying low for the time being... So I think it's time for everyone to take a load off! ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡
⭐︎ Intel: Although it's still unknown as to how the Harbingers' ship managed to disappear itself from Nautis's sensors, a conversation overheard by Dirk and Reese during their escape strongly suggests that while Mistiluxia clearly has dealings with the Abyss, the other Harbingers may not even know of its existence.
That doesn't mean all is quiet on the Nova Knight front, however. Even though there doesn't appear to be real any Harbinger activity on Earth these two weeks, there is an uptick in drinks monster sightings — more specifically, slushie monsters. While many of the monsters the Nova Knights face are directly summoned by the Harbingers, some, like the drinks monsters, are a byproduct of the Abyss's influence on Earth. So while there may not be a bigger Harbinger plot to foil, these monsters still need defeating! It is really hot out, though...would getting hit by just one frozen slushie attack be all that bad?
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His continued mutism is a deliberate choice, but for once it's one that has nothing to do with looking cool or stoic or mysterious--or very little to do with it, anyway. The tension in him is all him--he has so much he wants to say, to interject or introduce, even just to say that, hey, incidentally, he wanted to say some shit himself.
But that statement about chickening out was his cue to shut up and let them say what they need to--a logic he kind of understands, frankly, but they got their words out first, and he has no one to blame for that but himself. Call it curiosity, courtesy, or cowardice, but he held back, and they went for it--those are just the facts, and no amount of post-introductory regret will change what he didn't do.
It shouldn't even be a big deal. If he was capable of being remotely normal as a human being, it wouldn't matter. But he's not. And he knows he's not. He knows his own personality, and his own flaws, and he knows that if he says one thing, he'll say another, and so if he says anything, he won't stop saying things. The only way not to continue is not to start, so to keep himself from interrupting--from dictating, or directing, or prying, or overwhelming them--he keeps his mouth the fuck shut, following them in not-entirely-intentionally menacing silence until they reach what Pandora must consider a suitable spot.
He doesn't know why they couldn't have at least started this where they were--
And then, he knows exactly why.
His eyebrows lift, just slightly, in disbelief. Hope. Is that seriously their name? He wants to ask, but he has to stow it for later. Along with everything else. He's reeling privately, battling an internal wave of bewilderment and slight dismay, but they keep going, and this might be for the better. Because while they're making points he's much more prepared to be walking, that means he has a chance to get his shit together on the inside.
He stands, awkwardly--or imposingly--and glances at Cal briefly, as though asking do you see this shit?
Or maybe he's hoping for a cue--puppet to puppeteer.
But eventually, he steps closer and lowers his ass onto the bench, sitting slowly in a way that radiates deliberateness. He's trying to figure out the best way--the best time--the best strategy to speaking up. There's so much he wants to say that sitting quietly and politely (or what he thinks is politely) is fairly excruciating.
"You did do that," he agrees, his voice low. "Although by the end of it, I'd say it was more that you only heard what you didn't want to hear." He is being as restrained as possible, mostly out of desperation.
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"Yeah," they agree, trying to at least move past it. "And, you know, with the Sisters... I could have stopped myself from freaking out about Mortis. I could have locked in, but I was just..." They look up at the sky. "It felt like walking through a mine field. It really messed me up when we lost one of my friends to the Abyss, and then I got sucked into it, then you and I met and I haven't been doing anyone any favors there. And now four more people fell into the Abyss and only two got out." They're not, or at least not yet, going to apologize for what they said to him before the failed capture mission. They have to come to different point, and eventually, with luck, they'll find it.
"I'm not trying to make excuses or anything. I just was... I was expecting something different, you know? When I got that first call from Nautis. But this job is piling on so much stuff that I am obviously not handling well. And I'm sorry that it's just led to me lashing out at you and acting like... I don't know. A coward?" they try to finish, laughing only a little without any humor to it. "A shithead."
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"It's good you're acknowledging it," he says, sounding to his own ears like the most static helf-help stock phrase dispenser ever created. "It doesn't change anything. But it's a start." A start to what?
He doesn't even fucking know. Whatever his planned talk would have been a start to, he guesses. Something, maybe. That's the fantasy version of it. Or maybe absolutely fucking nothing. That's the version he's trying to pretend he isn't conscious of.
"You were only kind of a coward, anyway. A shithead, sure, but you turned it towards Shellustria once shit started happening. Not me, and not Mortis. You weren't very effective back there at the restaurant, but you didn't flinch. It was more like the first mission." As he talks, a realisation begins to grow. And then it happens: his mouth keeps going when it should have stopped.
"So you suck at people, but your action seems fine."
Shit.
....
He didn't mean to get here so fast. He didn't intend to take this over--this is why he needed to keep his mouth shut. Now he's set himself the fuck up, and that can't be all they have to say. Is it? There's no way they called him all the way out here just to say that. Strider, you fucking imbecile--
"I can--"
--what, he can tell? He can help? He can relate? No, he can't. He can't do any of that, because what he needs to do is shut his yap so he can get to where he's not going to say something worse. At least he caught himself before he said whatever it was he thought would be a good idea in that moment.
He shuts his eyes tightly, takes his own deep breath... and sighs, heavily. Like he's already exhausted of this.
"Nevermind. You were saying?"
no subject
"Oh man. Sorry," they say, once he's given them the chance to keep going. "No, that's actually really encouraging to hear. I've... hey, don't laugh? But after you tore into me at the Diner, I started at least taking guitar seriously." They extend their hand palm-up and spread their fingers to show off the callouses, not that they're anything to be impressed about. "It's not much, but it's a start. So, like. Thank you, I think is what people say?"
They return their hand to their lap. It's hard to come up with what to say next, but they still think there's more. They can't just leave it at that, right? "I really want to do the right thing, and my heart and my head," and Natalia and their mom, "Have been telling me that the right thing to do is to try to make up for the way I acted towards you. So... yeah. I'm just. Sorry that I've been handling my shit so badly, and that you had to be the lightning rod for it all. You didn't deserve it."
no subject
They're... laughing?
What's so fucking funny?
Well, if he hadn't shut himself up, that probably would have done it for him. He is genuinely not sure what's so funny, and he's frustrated enough with himself that he really isn't capable of pulling off any attempt to laugh with them, but... it's better than a fight, especially before he gets the chance to say anything he actually means to say. So he manages to suppress a grimace--or thinks he does, anyway.
In truth, the corner of his mouth twists in a strange way that isn't a smile, but it isn't fully committing to the frown, either. It does show some teeth, just for a microsecond.
The rest of his expression is hidden behind the sharply polarised surface of his sick trademark shades, so the way he blinks when they display their hand is concealed completely. The result is another unimpressed-looking non-reaction: just more flat, inexpressive staring. Finally, he glances down at his own hand in its fingerless glove: dry from lack of care, scarred and calloused from an excess of labour--or at least effort.
He doesn't know if he's supposed to actually say 'you're welcome' here, but given the struggles he's been having with time and place and choice of response, he decides not to.
Which is just as well, because when they describe him as a 'lightning rod' for their emotional fallout--and immediately follow up with 'you didn't deserve it,' it's his turn to laugh.
When Dirk Strider laughs, it's short: just a dry, hoarse little huff of breath that catches in his throat. But it's a laugh nonetheless.
"Funny you should say that," he says, and closes the hand he'd been scrutinising back up into a fist. Then he hesitates.
Is now a bad time? A good time?
This is as natural segue as he's likely to get. And they led right into it. But--that can't really be all there was to this, right? Just... 'I'm sorry?' He doesn't know how he feels about that to begin with, he's still processing it. Probably it would be easier if he wasn't so distracted with everything he has going on in his own head, but when isn't he? There's never a good time for thought, or any real intensive mental processes, unless he's by himself. Then it's easy. Around people--especially people who are talking to him, expecting things from him--it's basically impossible to keep his brain running smoothly.
"Are you done?" The question is sincere--although with how transparent his intentions tend to be, it may not sound that way.
"Because if that was all you had to say..." he lifts his hand, then redirects it to pat Lil Cal on the shoulder, giving himself an action while trying to find a way to continue that sentence without cutting them off. "I guess I'm just confused. I thought you had this justifiable hatred thing going on, and now you're apologising. Which--I appreciate it. I really do. Or... I think I do." Like, it's a nice gesture. He guesses.
"But it's kind of wasted on me. I think you probably owe the apology to Mortis." He shrugs one shoulder, the one that isn't supporting Lil Cal.
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"Would you believe I thought you'd be easier to apologize to?" they admit. "Mortis is... different, and I don't just mean whatever happened to her after the Sisters. I've been screwing things up with Mortis for longer than I've been screwing them up with you." They think back to the conversation with the girl with the guitar back at school, earlier this year. To the jam session where they'd revealed their love for Afterglow to the girl that they now assume has to be Mortis' real identity, and where they'd first heard advice that they weren't ready for. Every day it gets a little easier, but you gotta do it every day.
"And I really don't even know what I've been saying wrong. I've thought about it a lot and I have some really strong guesses, but, like." They look over at him, hoping to read something in his reactions, knowing they'll come up dry. "I can't apologize for something if I don't understand what I did wrong first. Otherwise it doesn't mean anything and I'm just going to end up doing it again. So," they start, and look back in their lap, "I have to have a really long talk with Mortis first."
no subject
Which is at least a reaction, even if not necessarily a very helpful one.
The reaction is, of course, to their accounting of Mortis. He has no idea what they're talking about, and it's not really his business--even if he is actually curious, because for the life of him he can not figure out how in the actual goddamn shit someone could screw up interacting with Mortis without being... you know, him. Let alone how anyone could screw up repeatedly.
But they do have a point, in the end. About apologising.
He has a lot of things he could say here--like how understanding what you're apologising for won't necessarily stop you from doing it again, and again, and again, whether that's by failure of self-control or by simply inventing new and previously-unrealised ways to do it again. But he doesn't, because he's making a concerted effort to not assume the worst of Pand--
To not assume the worst of Hope, no matter what his other priorities (or suspicions) might be.
"Good," he says finally. "I'm not sure that will help, but--if you're serious about it, then good. As for me--" he steers the conversation back before Hope can ask him what he means, or realise that they should be asking him more questions.
"I appreciate the apology," he is more sure of this now. Knowing that they intend to apologise to Mortis--to a person who didn't just spend a week or so in the Abyss, and who they did not (as far as he knows) have any reasonable pretense to take issue with--has eased some of his discomfort with the gesture.
"But you know it doesn't change anything, right? I'm not returning the favour. Me saying thanks isn't the same as me apologising." Which isn't to say he won't, necessarily--but he doesn't want it taken for granted. He has to start at the beginning, or he's going to lose it. Now. The time to act is now.
"There is something I need to ask, but don't get your hopes.... up... ugh. No. Hang on." He stops himself again, angling his head in such a way that their own face is reflected back at them in triangular duplicate.
"Is your name really Hope?"
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There's that word again. Their name, of course. Something their parents, their real parents, had wanted them to always keep with them no matter how dark the world got. Fat lot of good that's done them lately, but maybe that's why they needed to talk with their mom. Maybe that's why they needed to not be a Nova Knight for a little bit and just be a confused and afraid 25-year-old. Maybe they needed the reminder.
"But I know that I can't force you to react the way I want you to. I'm okay with you just saying thanks, and then if sometime down the line you find anything you want to apologize to me for, then we can just do that when it gets here." They think, maybe, that he should apologize for at least one thing right now. They aren't going to push it; instead, they'll swallow all their own words and try to be satisfied with the way they taste.
"So what's up? What do you need to ask me?" they finish, trying to sound curious. Friendly, maybe, if they felt like pushing it. Instead, they know there's a slight shake to their words.
no subject
Which feels to Dirk like Hope's emotional needs and wants are being presented to him against his will, with the expectation that he not only do something--anything--about it, but care about it on a fundamental level he does not seem to have. is expected to make space for Hope's internal life in his, or even at the expense of his.
This is a sensation that Dirk experiences a lot when interacting with other people, and he knows it's something he's supposed to shoulder, and shoulder gladly--as a Nova Knight especially, yes, but simply as a good person, or at least a bare minimum performance human being, he's supposed to take willing responsibility for other people, all of them. All the time. He is expected to make space for their internal lives in his, or even at the expense of his, and not doing so is another moral failure--
But Hope actually knows what it looks like when he does step up. They would probably like him to apologise for it, in fact.
So maybe it's for the better that right now the demand is too much, and that he simply ignores it in favour of his own priorities. Maybe. Or maybe not.
"It's about the Abyss," he says, and his low, flat intonation doesn't change an iota. "I don't know what it was like for you, but I ended up in a pretty heated exchange with something that was more like my own brain than anything, at least until the end. A petty, vindictive version of my brain that wore your face and had a lot to say about my personal failures. Having said that aloud, I realise I've just described my brain normally, minus your face. I don't spend a lot of time visualising your face specifically. That would be extremely fucking weird. Not to mention rude, since--again--this superficially Pandora-looking doppelganger was dedicated entirely to telling me I was a hypocritical fraud who was avoiding any kind of personal relationships while also trying to get me to self-disclose as many humiliating details about my ex as I could stomach so it could insult me about them." He pauses there, playing back over exactly what he'd just over-explained versus what he'd intended to reveal, and where it was he was trying to go with it.
He finds himself frustratingly prone to getting lost in the process of thinking, and then when speaking is added, he often loses the goal--the words and the thoughts inform each other in a twisted cognitive ouroboros. An ouroboros that is to Dirk completely transparent and clear, but an ouroboros nonetheless. Even if he goes in with a plan, the process itself simply erases whatever mapped-out intentions he has. Sometimes it gets there by virtue of the thought--the plan--existing fully formed in his mind, with no conscious effort of his own. Other times, he simply begins to speak, and follows his thoughts to their conclusions via whatever logic he has access to in his own brain at the moment, and if those conclusions are not what they would have been at the time the plan was formed, then... well, it sucks to be the man with the plan, doesn't it?
He finds himself more or less in the vicinity of where he meant to be, though. The relief is palpable--he's almost lightheaded with it.
"And most of that is none of your business. You don't care about any of that shit; you definitely don't want want to know about the mangled corpse of my attempted love life, and I don't want to fucking talk about it. I wouldn't even bring it up except that it kept using my own words against me, in my voice. Which, again: so what? But every single one of those words was something I'd said to you."
He watches Hope now, looking for their reaction--something he is ill-equipped to spot and even less well-equipped to correctly interpret, and even further incapable of recognising this about himself. But unlike him, Hope actually has a face and knows how to move it. So he looks, while his own unmoving face and voice haven't given away a thing.
no subject
"It did that?" they start, their eyebrows having gone up, their jaw having dropped just a little. "I mean... you're right, I definitely don't want to know anything about the stuff that it was making you talk about in there. But I don't know why it would be using my voice or the things you said to me." They furrow their brow and look ahead of them for a moment; they know it'd be useless to apologize to him for all of this by now, but that doesn't give them any clarity on what to actually say or do next.
"I think it just... digs into your memories and finds stuff that it thinks might affect you." It's the best guess they can muster right now, but it's not a very good one. They frown slightly. "Maybe it recognized me in your memories from when it was having its fun with me and just wanted to take the form of something that it thought would rattle you. I saw Neos and Mortis when I was in there," they begin to explain, finally actually getting around to it, "And Neos is one of my closest friends on the team, and Mortis is... Mortis, you know? So it worked. Like, really worked."
They slump their shoulders and turn their hands palm up in their lap. "I wish I knew how it operated any better. I think it just likes fucking with people to try to crush their spirits. And some of us make it through," they gesture to him, then to themself, "And some of us... waddle out of it making accordion noises like a cartoon character. Maybe it used my face and the things you said to me because it thought you were the same as me."
no subject
"Oh, yeah," he agrees, trying to sound casual or perhaps annoyed but still mostly just sounding flat. "It did go on about us being similar. Like that wasn't the root everything I said to you at the Diner. But arguing that didn't really make any difference, before you ask. When it couldn't break me, its goal seemed to change--or maybe its goal just became more obvious. But it went from feigning disappointment that we--you and me, specifically--hadn't become friends, to trying to bait me into asking you guys about Nova Pastos--the other one, I mean--and suggested that maybe I could 'learn something' from that."
He glances at Hope only briefly here. Brief in part because he doesn't need a gauge of their response to continue, and in part because there's an instinctive aversion to seeing whatever that response might be. It will only slow him down now.
(Deep underneath the pragmatism lurks a dim anxiety that looking could reveal more than he wants to see, but it's so distant that to Dirk, the reflex feels natural, not forced.)
"Yours wasn't the only... I don't know what to call it, spectre, maybe... that I met. But it was definitely the most personal. That's why I wanted to talk to you. I'm trying to figure out if there was a reason for that." He pauses, swallowing his own scepticism and bitterness--and the remembered taste and scent of blood.
"Without doing any damage on its behalf in the process."
Ah, fuck--
Here he is saying this, and he almost did exactly that. He corrects the record, and quickly.
"Don't worry too much about the similarity thing. You're nothing like me."
It's meant as a reassurance.
no subject
Then they hear him try to walk back what he said. The idea that the two of them are similar. It's ridiculous, right? He's this asshole who's so shit at talking to other people that he keeps driving everybody away whenever he tries to have a conversation with them. And Hope, no, Hope has it all figured out. They're doing great at this. They're killing every single conversation they've ever had and they don't feel increasingly alone about it.
They don't make eye contact (they never can with him but that's not the point) when they utter the only thing that comes to mind. "Maybe I am? I mean, I don't know. We don't really know each other."
It would have been so easy to just, like, keep this relationship business-only and cut and run from someone who's only ever really made them feel bad. But they have too much hope (hah) in their heart to assume that it's exclusively his fault that they've felt bad every time they've spoken to him. And this conversation isn't going so bad.
At last, they glance towards him cautiously. "We could always try to figure out how similar to each other we are ourselves?"
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"Seriously? I tell you that the Abyss spent god knows how long trying to manipulate me into do something, and your concluding thought is, 'well maybe you should do it?'" He lifts one brow at them, just a little emphasis on the batshit absurdity of the idea. "You don't need me to tell you how insane that sounds, right?"
He shakes his head, and turns away--just briefly--and he reaches up to Cal's arm again, coiling it loosely around his hand. The end result is a sort of one-armed one-sided embrace by Cal, with the puppet's soft mitten held securely in his palm.
"If there was one overriding lesson to be learned from that place, it's that whatever I have going on is best kept away from... let's just say 'from people.'" There, finally, is a bit of a change in his voice--a grim one, the voice of a man who has been given a mission that asks everything of him, but is ready to give himself up to do it.
And that should be the end of it.
Should be.
Except that now a tiny corner of his mouth twists up(? is that up?) again, as he rubs his calloused fingers over Cal's entwined limb. Something mean solidifies in his chest--something contrary and difficult and stubborn and self-sabotaging. He could push it down. Should push it down. He should ignore it, stick to his proverbial guns, get up and leave.
He's never been a firearms kind of guy, though. That was old man Harley's schtick. And Jake's. And... Reese's, he guesses. (Maybe he should unpack that sometimes. But nah.)
That solid mass of cussedness, of ever-so-slight sadism (or masochism?), settles where his his heart is supposed to go. He doesn't get up. He doesn't leave. He opens his big fat mouth, and says:
"But I've learned recently that I don't really like being told what I can and can't do."
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They breathe, and they squeeze the muscles in the clenched hand opposite him to help get some of the energy out. Eventually they'll stop seeing themself as prey when it comes to this guy specifically. Probably. That's the goal, at least.
And then he keeps going, and there's a part of him that Hope is genuinely surprised to see. Their eyebrows go up, and they give a smirk that's a lot less ambiguous. Maybe he does like kicking at walls until they give. Maybe he hates the idea of marching to someone else's drum. Maybe, in an extremely specific and narrow sense, he's what Hope wishes they could be. (Weren't they just talking to Natalia about this, too?) They decide not to let that little bit of insecurity come out quite yet and straighten their back instead.
"Hell yeah," they offer eloquently. "And, like... nobody's saying we have to be the best friends in the world or anything. I'd be happy if we're just teammates who work okay together. I just think it'd be nice if the only stuff you knew about me wasn't all the stuff that I was taking out on you for no good reason." They try to soften their expression into a smile, which fits better on their face, they think. Certainly it fits better right now.
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"Hell yeah," he echoes back--and with a deft twist of his wrist, he uncoils Cal's limb from his hand, instead cradling its noodly mass so that Cal's soft mitten fist is extended to dap up.
"You know his name, and you probably know mine--" He's under no illusions as to how incognito he isn't, but he's not exactly an A lister on the red carpet either, "but let's do this right. Lil Cal--" he tips his head expectantly.
"And Dirk." He pauses, then adds, "Strider."
He's proud of his name, of course. He's proud to be who he is, always has been. Sure, he went through some periods where he was angry, or hurt, or bitter, or whatever. But he's outgrown that--or he wants to have outgrown that, and so he makes sure he stays proud of his absent Bro and everything he's ever done and been. He assumes he'd be pretty proud to know Dave.
And though he very secretly, desperately wants to believe that Dave would be proud of him, and proud to know him.... that's gotten a bit murkier in the past couple of weeks. But that's a private matter. Publicly, he's always going to be a Strider. It's his job to fucking act like one. He keeps it real. And what Dave doesn't know won't hurt him, right?
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They shake their head a little bit, moving past the subject that they themself had decided to expand on. "My last name's Carassia, is the point." Little point in hiding it right now, they think, especially since it's their legal surname now and they have never actually been able to hide it for very long. "Like the hyper-rich guy who keeps trying to pretend he's spending all his money on good stuff because he knows the right way to spin it."
If their birth father is proud of them, they couldn't give a shit. Their mom and brother are too important, and those are the only family members they worry about. It's not easy to think about it too deeply, but if Dirk is dropping this information then at the very least, Hope feels like they should reciprocate. And their name usually gets questions, so they have to come out ahead of it.
"He's a real champion of a guy. Anyway, um. Usually I have an Orange G to toast with or something for times like these, but I wanted to handle this one sober. But we could head down to the konbini and get something real quick before the fireworks start going off if you wanted?" It's just an idea; they're fine either way. Their guard is still up more than a little, but less than it was even just a handful of minutes again. They might be moving too quickly towards casualness; it's hard to tell.
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Sometimes he makes jokes that are obviously meant to be jokes. Not often. But sometimes. This is one of those times.
"Huh." Dirk takes in the sparse details offered him.
Carassia... he does know the name, actually. Not well, not on a personal level--but he spent enough time around Old Man Harley to have drifted in and out of the Carassian orbit once or twice. He must have met the guy at least once.
He mostly knows the guy by his public-facing persona--altruistic and benevolent rich guy shit, same as basically anyone with insane amounts of money and a desire to keep the power it gives them. Dirk doesn't think much of that kind of thing--which is not the same as not thinking about it much. Old Man Harley was an outlier--investing in his own projects and company (or companies), and then fucking off to the veldt or the jungle or tundra or whatever for months at a time, hunting anything that moved and 'living off the land' until he either had a body count that satisfied him or nearly died from eating yet another insanely toxic flower that he'd mistaken for something else that looked completely different.
He ate a lot of poisonous and inedible shit, honestly, it was like a constant theme. But it took a real kicker to actually make him go home to recover. Dirk was always impressed by how much abuse the old guy's body and brain could take, but nothing ever stopped him. Harley always got back up and went back out, gun(s) in hand and blazing spirit uncowed and unbroken.
Dirk had never understood Harley's seemingly broad tolerance for the 'respectable' rich. Guys like Carassia. Harley loved to show up to their events whenever invited--at least for the first hour--and make his way around the room or rooms, drinking his whiskeys and fancy wines and hardly ever remembering anyone's names. Sometimes Dirk suspected he just liked the free booze and canapes, but he did have a way with those guys. Dirk didn't.
Dirk honed his poker face young and just kept it that way; Harley liked to joke that he was the world's first confirmed case of 'if you keep making that face, it will stick like that.'
Weird that he and Hope should have even that much in common--the whole 'wealthy and influential familial connection' bit was a wild one to have going on repeatedly in the Knights' number.
"I don't see it," he says, appraising Hope's appearance properly for maybe the first time. "But maybe that's better. Less chance of being held ransom." He's still being glib, but he can't help it--sometimes the riffs just kind of happen.
"Sounds like you don't like him much." This is bait, but it's also just an observation of fact--plausibly deniable bait, basically, which is the kind Dirk prefers when it comes to.... people. Interacting with people. Let them take the bait, or not. He retains the appearance of a man unconnected and incurious, and if the other person refuses or ignores him--well, it was never an actual question, so it's hardly a rejection, now is it?
He is also currently redirecting them away from the alcohol thing. He remembers their drink back at the Midnight Diner, though. So this is strike two.
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"He's fine behind the scenes, I guess. I don't really know him. After I turned 18 and legally didn't have to be his problem anymore, I moved out and we stopped talking." They shrug, though, trying to remain blasé about it. No reason to go into the details of what's happened in the seven years since then, they think, flipping through memories of aimlessness and malaise and struggling against the bars of their own golden cage like a flipbook drawn on the page corners of a well-worn tome.
"And that was the better part of a decade ago, so... hard to feel too much about him," they lie and shrug. Their thumb and middle finger twitch a little at their side like they're going to snap, but they hold back from actually doing it. "I've been doing my best to stake my own claim since then. And, you know, now I'm a—now I'm doing this stuff," they correct, trying at least a little bit to watch their words, "So I can be proud of that instead of whatever little he did for me."
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Dirk isn't fazed by this revelation, per se. He just doesn't really 'get' it on a personal level. Then again, how much does he 'get' of the human experience? Less and less, it seems to him, with every new development in his life.
He listens to the rest with a semi-detached ear. Even if he doesn't emote or react visibly, he is paying attention to it all; his disconnect isn't the same as disinterest. Keeping his mouth shut helps conceal a lot. Like when their hand movement distracts him briefly--behind his shades, his sharp eyes drop to watch their fingers twitch.
The hand itelf never rises from where it rests. His gaze snaps back up to their face.
He continues to listen.
But much like whatever is going on with Hope's gender, he has no frame of reference for any of the experiences or relationships Hope is elaborating on. He's capable of recognising that's a 'him' problem and not a Hope problem, though. So, he... well, he tries.
"Sounds... complicated." This is as close as he can get to an understanding response. "Don't let this put you off, but speaking honestly, I have no idea what that's like. Any of it." Did Hope want brutal, dubiously self-effacing honesty with the subtlety of a thrown brick? Because Hope is getting brutal, dubiously self-effacing honesty with the subtlety of a thrown brick.
"You mentioned transitioning.... whenever you did that. I'd guess that's one thing that's entirely yours already, then? Your gender, I mean. That's all you. Stake claimed. You did that." If he sounds awkward, it's because he is. What's worse, he knows he is. "Or so I'm assuming. I don't actually know what you did, or how."
This is excruciating. He can't leave it like this. There's no way to backpedal now--or, well, there is, but it would take at least as many words as biting that proverbial bullet and it would leave him a lot more unsatisfied. Intellectually and otherwise.
Now that he knows, his curiosity is going to kill him if he doesn't ask. Besides, isn't that part of getting to know someone? Isn't that the fucking point of this conversation? To know them, or get to know them? Or try to?
"Tell you what, I'm just going to go ahead and ask you something, and you can ask me whatever the hell you want in return. No holds barred." That's fair, he thinks. A truth for a truth.
"What do you mean by 'transitioned?'"
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(Or something. Man. They do actually believe that, don't they? Maybe they aren't as terrible at this teaching job that they're barely clinging to as they thought.)
"Oh! I mean, like. Um. So I was born a guy," they say, almost surprising themself with how quickly they're just coming out with it. "And it never, like, felt right—it's hard to explain. But it got a lot worse when I was a teenager," they continue, talking around one particular part of growing up, "And I started to realize that I related way more to the other girls I was around and I kind of always had. And I think, like... I started going by Hope when I was 15, and then a year or so later I went on E, and I've been living like this ever since. Ten years this year."
As they talk about it, they don't really notice, but their stance opens up a little. Their arms drop to their sides, they look up and towards Dirk a little more often instead of being caught in their own thoughts, they smile... it's the most relaxed and casual they've looked basically this whole time.
"Sorry," they say, and they look like they could almost laugh at themself for a second. "I actually have no clue if that answered your question."
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Okay. That does in fact track with what Dirk broadly assumed to be the case, and it's a little less weird somehow than the opposite--at least to Dirk's mind.
"I think so," he says at last. It's not the most satisfying answer, but he realises that may have been his fault--and it was what he was asking when he first asked it.
"It at least answered the very open-ended and in retrospect precursory question I asked just now. I just have a hell of a lot of other questions that it didn't answer. But you didn't fail with your answer--I failed with my question." Never let it be said that Dirk Strider does not take responsibility for his mistakes.
At least when it comes to the ones he recognises as mistakes.
"Don't know if answering them is going to change the fact that I don't really get it, though. Speaking personally. At least not about... that." There are other ways he's felt wrong, or found he could relate more to something that wasn't what he was supposed to.
"But I can't say I've ever had a second thought about my gender. Not once. Even before it was just me and Cal--I'm talking day one right out of the womb. Being male was just the most obvious thing in the world to me. Like with Cal. I always knew what I was." There is a pattern here. Dirk is aware of it; he doesn't care to highlight it, but he's fully conscious of what it implies.
But this isn't like that--his kinship with his puppets, both as puppetmaster and as (perhaps) something else, something closer to objecthood than personhood--is a completely separate subject. It just kind of happened to fall into the conversation, thanks entirely to his Bro's abrupt disappearance from his life. There aren't any other major markers of time in his early life. He didn't have peers--except Cal. He didn't have a guardian, or caretaker, or parent--except for Cal. He didn't exist in any way in the world--except to himself, and to Cal. Cal was the other through which he saw himself, and the fact that he and Cal were both male was a non-question before questions even existed.
Gender, for Dirk, is one of the few things he is absolutely, one-hundred-percent, unwaveringly certain about, embraces in himself, and is in no way trying to change. If anything, he's concerned about the exact opposite--he loves his male-ness, his manhood and masculinity, and is in fact attracted to that quality in general (sexually, yes, but aesthetically and maybe even spiritually.) Which leads to him pushing himself further in that direction--in pursuit of the masculinity he's not only very comfortable and content with having been presented with at birth, but which he would like to enhance and to embody more completely.
That's about as opposite of what Hope is talking about as is possible to humanly experience--or so he thought. But thinking about now...
Maybe not?
".... huh. Maybe that actually makes sense. Not to make this about me, but I've always been a man. I love being a man. I love manhood, and masculinity, and men in general. I can't--and I don't want to--imagine an alternate reality where I'm anything but a man. Nothing against anyone else, but it's not me. I don't want to try and be anything else, either. I don't think I can, but if it were given to me as an option--" he waves a hand, slightly agitated by how idiotic he knows he's starting to sound, "--which clearly it is, I know--" he's not trying to erase you here, Hope--
"--I would sooner kill myself."
Cal, of course, is grinning in a wildly inappropriate way, an expression aimed directly at Hope.
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Probably not, but, like, maybe.
"That's how it felt for me, too," they say to the way he chooses to cap it off, and god help them they do have a grin that almost matches Cal's, though theirs fades much more quickly. This time, when this subject comes up, they want to treat it with the gravity it deserves. Especially after the vision that Shelley had shown them in that mirror, the one that felt... too real. Like it was a plan they might have actually gone through with. Like it was one that would have worked. They sigh. Not the right time to dwell on it.
"I was lucky enough to have other people to tell me what I was. I could figure it out before I had to live too long in a body that I hated." They don't say out loud that they have their brother's early influence to thank for it; it would probably be a bad idea. "There's a universe out there where I never did any of this, though, and I don't like that version of me's odds. It's really just..."
They don't really know how else to say it. They sigh out a lifetime of tension that they still somehow know how to carry with them. "It's hell. To be in that kind of position. I'm really glad," and they look up at Dirk again and they sound so sincere about it, "That it's not something you've had to worry about. That level of security is a good thing to have, and aren't there enough things to worry about? I'm really glad I'm not having a gender crisis right now. Not helping the other crises, but at least I have that figured out." They try to crack another little joke about everything they're dealing with. That worked so well last time, right?
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All that talk of crises should have been enough to keep him busy, but it's not, really--all those crises are secondary, to him. This other universe, the one where Hope never finds a way to themself--what does Dirk do, there? Is he any different, at all? Does he live, or die? Is he changed?
Does it matter?
A question that will remain unanswered.
As Hope speaks, Dirk realises there has been a change in the dynamic. It's not a thing he notices when it happens. It's already happened, but he's only now recognising it--like finding oneself much further from shore than intended, and now the way back can no longer be seen on the horizon.
Or at the very least, it's a bit of a speck on that horizon, and it takes a keen, practised, or maybe just desperate eye to spot it, and the desperation or determination to begin the way back. Whether or not the eye's owner can accomplish the feat is an entirely separate matter.
Distance is one measure of this change. Climate is another. Fairer weather, metaphorically speaking, felt in the energy and air between them. The friction smoothed out, the natural rise of escalation levelling into an exchange--not of ultimatums and judgments, but of something simpler and more human. Thoughts and feelings, maybe. There's no challenge here. It leaves Dirk feeling lost at sea. Adrift, in the worst way.
He just doesn't know how to swim when the surface is so calm.
Something about the way Hope grins at him when they agree with him makes his eyebrow lift--but he doesn't challenge them at all. Not on that. (In truth, it's almost a charm point. He hangs onto that, for a moment.)
Instead, what catches on his mental gears is something they don't even suspect.
"Someone... told you what you were?" He thought Hope was talking about the work inside themself--who they were, free of anyone else's claim.
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"I didn't know what being trans meant, or really what gender even was. Not on my own. It was one of the last things my brother shared with me before my dad discovered me and... took me away, um." The sentence lands heavy, the words weighing down their hands in their lap. They try to move on without dwelling on it too much, for both their sakes.
"He was sharing a manga with me, something from about thirty years ago I think? The protagonist could change genders just by bathing in a certain temperature of water, and I couldn't have been more than six at the time but he was willing to indulge his little half-sibling's questions and it all just... kind of kicked off from there." They look up, towards the sky, knowing that Zeke is looking up at the same one right about now, and they smile as their words trail off.
And the reality, the memory of the person they're sharing all this with pokes at the edges of their idyll memories and they feel their eyes go wide. Like they've fucked up by being too happy about their family. "Right, um. I figured out who I was all my own. I just needed the nudge to discover what I was first. If that makes sense?"
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Which is a bit ironic, because it's thanks to that detouring that Hope has now revealed quite a bit more about their family. Which is a subject he'd previously chosen not to ask for details about--but the thing about gaining new information, about putting pieces together and assembling an understanding and knowing, is that there's an undeniable pleasure about it.
"I know that anime, actually. Never struck me as the genre to inspire personal epiphany, but..." he waves a hand. It could be a dismissive gesture, but he doesn't really mean it that way. He's the man with no one and nothing but a vintage puppet to guide his revelations or insights. Who the fuck is he to judge? It's hard to communicate nonchalance in the moment, though.
Maybe he's just disappointed because this line of inquiry was a non-issue in the end.
Or maybe he's bitter. So maybe what he says next is a little spiteful.
But his interest in their response to it is genuine.
"Honestly, I can't relate to any of it, so chalk that up to a 'me' problem this time. But I am starting to connect some dots here about why you don't like your dad."
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CW sexual language, imagery, and... conspiracy?
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CW accidental misogyny with objectifying imagery
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I've worked this tag over so many times, I don't know if it makes sense any more or not!
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CW hints towards some disordered eating? With a side of control issues? It's fine,
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