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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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"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.
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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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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?'"
no subject
(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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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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"Yeah, I was just a kid when he... you know, found me and took me away from my mom and brother. To raise me in his stupid manor with all his other bastards." They didn't exactly expect that they'd come out so hot given this inch of runway, but here they are. It's a little embarrassing; they shrink in on themself just a bit, but the words don't stop.
"He's an awful dad. The only reason we were all there was to manage his PR—his wife is, like, amazing at finding anything on anyone, so she's the one who tracked us all down, and she made damn sure that none of us did anything that embarrassed him." Addiena still does that, of course, but other than the way their shoulders stiffen when they bring up their not-mother, Hope is pretty sure they haven't given too much away.
"It's kind of shocking that I made it out as well-adjusted as I did." They glance over at Dirk and turn up a corner of their mouth, then share the look with Cal, too, just to make sure he's included. "I've been out of there and back in the real world for seven years now, just kind of readjusting to what normal people do when they reach adulthood. Doing a real bang-up job of it," they add, always happy to make fun of themself.
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It's not the mansion or the surveillance that's drawing his perfect poker face out of alignment. Neither of those strike him as weird, inappropriate, or bad. Dirk himself loves surveillance, and he loves intel collection and analysis. Information control is a part of life; whether or not you actively engage with it has more to do with how aware you are of it than how much it applies to you. He finds the act of dodging others' efforts at it a habit and even a pleasure. As for the mansion, collecting a bunch of one's offspring in one place like Harley and apparently Carassia is just kind of what you do when you're obscenely wealthy. He considers this practise a meaningfully different one from his whole-of-youth sentence in the Strider penthouse suite--for example, food is routinely available, home repairs and upkeep are not in the hands of a five-year-old, and other human beings exist on a more regular basis than 'not even once in several years.'
There is a narrative temptation to say that he's no stranger to completely weird and inappropriate ways to contain and raise children, but that would imply that he's capable of recognising when a situation qualifies for that kind of explicit derogatory--which he's absolutely fucking not.
Despite everything, he is actually aware that his own childhood turned into an extreme, illegal, and nigh-unprecedently dangerous case of neglect. He just doesn't think it was necessarily wrong.
As for anyone else's upbringing, his perspective is actually more warped by a completely different man's total failure at parenthood: old man Harley.
Which is a whole Thing. A thing that Hope has vaguely reminded him of, but in a way that makes Harley's actions seem almost respectable by comparison. Thus the pause.
Dirk is only barely cognisant of the fact that Harley might have been doing some of it wrong, and yet parts of Hope's barely-prompted gutspilling still manage to strike Dirk as fucking weird.
"'All' of you?" The words leave his mouth and his scepticism is actually audible.
"Not to distract from what you just said. You've been doing the whole 'normal people' thing great, by the way. I had no idea there was anything weird about you. But I gotta backtrack because how I react to this depends entirely on how many bastards we're suddenly talking."
Cal meets Hope's gaze, and then he and Dirk look at each other before Cal looks back at Hope and Dirk looks up at the sky--seemingly stuck in a state of thought.
When Dirk does look--uh, maybe at Hope, maybe straight ahead--Hope can see themself reflected in the polished gleam of his shades' lenses.
"Just how far was this dude sowing his wild oats? I'm currently picturing literal dozens of kids in one fucking mansion, maybe even scores. Like he's assembling some kind of fucked-up children's army in hopes of conquering Chalra with a wave of half-bred child foot soldiers. Or maybe infiltrating the upper echelons--literally out there seeding the government with his own product."
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They remember the other kids. Anna, who'd already been in her teens when Hope had gotten there. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and the most visibly pissed about it all. Jessy, two years older than Hope and already having started her transition—and yet, she'd always seemed somehow happy to be there. And Lina, who'd shown up from an adoption center and whom Hope had always been a little unsure as to whether she was even one of his kids. They'd always treated her like their little sister, though.
But they frown as they go through that list. "He really liked tracking down girls. Maybe he thought we would dilute his bloodline if we were allowed to be out there," they say, bitter but with an uneasy tone beneath it. Trying to move past it themself, so they don't have to think about it for too long, they continue, adding another name to the list of things for Dirk to remember. "Maybe it was just a coincidence. I was there for a while until J.R. and I started talking about gender together. He..."
They breathe out, trying to remove their father like a toxin from their body that just keeps finding ways to build itself back up. It's healthy. It's healthy and it's normal to talk about this stuff, and you don't have to infodump. You can just talk about these things like people would talk about an old breakup or the weather, or something banal like that. You've got this.
"He always supported whatever stuff we said we wanted to get into. I don't remember him being interested in anything, but he bought us whatever we needed to keep us happy and stop us from wanting to leave. Anna bust out of there as soon as she legally could," they say with a glance in the same direction as the road that that older woman had taken to greener pastures, "But my sisters and I didn't even know to question it."
They're giving too much away, but it feels nice. It feels nice to get this off their chest, even if there's the risk of being too open too fast. Scaring him off probably isn't likely, but walking out of this conversation with new wounds is unavoidable.
CW sexual language, imagery, and... conspiracy?
Dirk's brows don't so much inch ever-closer together as they 'millimetre' their way there. Two thick, angular blond caterpillars, each reaching over the steep slopes of his shades towards the other. To describe his expression as 'vexed' would be--well, accurate, for once. He's wearing an expression, and he's even wearing it on his whole face. Would you look at that.
"......"
He sits in that for an entire two or three seconds, even. Thinking. Processing. Holding pieces up against each other to see if they click to close a circuit.
Then, abruptly, he takes a big breath, his brows returning to their standard level of strictly stoic 'nothing to read here'--as though he's reached some kind of conclusion. Which he has.
"How good did you say his armpiece was at intelligence again? If it were just you, I'd say coincidence, but two of you, for a clean four-zero? The maths start looking less and less probable. I'm not suggesting he was collecting some kind of fucked up child harem--unless you think he was, in which case I guess I'm providing you with a little statistical support to substantiate those suspicions, and then I guess all I've got to add is 'fucking yikes.'" He shakes his head, as if all he can muster in the wake of that psychological nuke is mere disappointment in Mr. Carassia's life and choices.
But he's not done thinking about this. Or asking about it.
"Did--or rather, does he have any legitimate kids? I don't, uh, keep up with that kind of thing--the only press I actually care about is my Bro's business and mine."
He could have left it there and waited for an answer, but it doesn't occur to him not to loop Hope into his direct train of thought now. In a sense, he's kidnapped them onto it--whether or not this is a 'tied to the tracks' moment or merely a runaway train is almost immaterial.
"I'm wracking my brain over here, trying to come up with some kind of unifying explanation that makes a lick of goddamn sense. 'Only' four isn't that many, but what's the time frame on that? Are you all the same age? That could be a clue as to whether it was deliberate or if he's just a serial sidepiece skeet-shooter. Was he aiming for something with all that juice?" He pauses, using Cal's puppet hand to support his chin as he thinks. Cal's other arm is draped supportively around his neck. The perfect image of a plush codependence.
"Unless he's the most fertile motherfucker in Chalra, that's a lot of loads unaccounted for. What's his conjugal coconspirator's part in this? Is she chill with all this, or is she in the background fucking seething? Do you know what their relationship is like? Was it a political or business marriage? Is she a secret lesbian? Or maybe she's into it. Maybe this is a cucking thing."
Did Hope want to think about their father's sex life in this much detail? If not: too bad. This is Dirk Strider's actual mental process, printing hot and fresh off the mental presses.
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"Oh my god," they stammer out, and put their palm up in the universal "stop" gesture. "Please. I really don't wanna think about my dad's junk. Can I just..."
They close their eyes, shake their head a little bit as though wiping an Etch-a-Sketch clean, then open their eyes and continue. "Anna was 14 or 15 when I got there, and J.R. was 9—two years older than me. I still talk to her," they add, though not really as often as they used to. "She got into a bad relationship a couple years ago and it really messed her up. Oh, um, and Lina was maybe 9 or 10, but me and J.R. had grown up a little more. I must have been 14. So that's..."
They've done the math on this before, but they have to remind themself, looking up towards the sky and counting on their fingers while they mouth the numbers. The sky is starting to turn the right shade for dusk; it's pretty, they think idly between figuring out ages. The fireworks are probably going to start soon, which means it's time for them to also start thinking of wishes. (Ha. Like they don't have enough of those.) One thing at a time, though.
"He had four kids in twelve years if I got it right?" they say now that they're back in reality and freed from the math labyrinth. Regarding both of them and looking more at Lil Cal's eyes than Dirk's (just because they actually can), they finish this particular trip down memory lane: "I don't remember how old everyone was when he brought them in, but I remember Anna being, like, mortified that someone as young as me was there. So I don't know if that says anything about what he was trying to do or if he was just, you know. That—that thing you said about shooting." They're not going to repeat it.
They hadn't even considered Addiena's role in all of this, but the biggest thing they still remember about her is to try really hard to not piss her off. Janus wasn't absent so much as he was hands-off, but Addiena... even when she wasn't anywhere in sight, her presence had this way of lingering like a spider in the cracks between the floorboards. A shudder alights on Hope's shoulders despite the heat.
CW accidental misogyny with objectifying imagery
Otherwise, they get nothing. His eyes barely glance to their hand, and that minimal movement isn't visible through his shades. He's staring them in the eye--waiting, attentive. A least until they get lost in the maths.
Like... really lost, apparently.
He tries to be patient, and to keep up--two things that are generally feasible, but which in combination become much harder. He takes the trivia as it comes, along with the numbers--which he puts together immediately (15 9 7 -> 14 means plus 7 to all, so the broadest range would be 22 16 14 and 9), but Hope... doesn't. And that's fine, he can wait a second while they do. But then they just... stop talking, and stare into the sky. Mouthing and tapping their fingers while they do the work he's already done.
He has no idea what to do himself. Sure, he can sit. He does that. For at least a couple of seconds. Then he looks at the sky. This takes maybe another second. And already he can feel himself fraying. Each one of those seconds feels longer and longer, time expanding from each one logarithmically as he act of simply sitting here, not moving and not speaking, next to another person with whom he is supposed to be in conversation, begins to actively shred his brain.
Out of restlessness, and habit, he turns to the other person present: Cal. He (Dirk) shifts him (Cal) off his (Dirk's) shoulders, turning the puppet to face him with his bright eyes and cheeky grin. He plays with Cal's hands, waving them a little as though the puppet is talking and gesticulating, then putting a soft mitt over his (Cal's) mouth, for some tittering laughter. Then Cal reaches out and touches Dirk's hair, and Dirk uses his free hand to smack Cal's hand lightly off his 'do. And then his other hand off his cheek, because dude, boundaries--
Hope's final answer--which is to say, the conclusion Dirk came to however many seconds ago--barges its way between them through Dirk's ears as Dirk alternatively bobs each of Cal's hands up and down, and he looks up at Hope with a deadfaced expression for a second while turning Cal's head to look at them in turn. Just in time to make perfect eye contact, in fact.
"Thirteen on the wide end of the margin, but yeah," he says, picking up the thread flawlessly. "You know, next time you have a bunch of numbers like that, you can toss them to me and I'll crunch them for you." He waves one of Cal's hands, and--while it's not clear when he got his other hand up in Cal's controls--the doll opens and closes his jaw quickly and repeatedly, like he's muching up a delicious snack. "I'm a bit faster than you, so you can save yourself some effort."
Or, you know, do what Dirk did and spend hours of your life doing math in your head to keep yourself busy while you're alone and bored and doing everything yourself, until it becomes an effortless process. And assuming, which he already has based on this single instance, that Hope doesn't just have a natural head for numbers and their patterns and therefore needs (or could benefit from) the help of someone like him.
Yes, it's better to do it yourself, and keep doing it until you get good at it. Until it's effortless.
But in a pinch--or in a conversation where you'll keep Dirk Strider waiting--he's willing to lift his own weight a little. As a.... friend?
"There's a consistent interval of 4 years on average... except for you and JR, that's only two years. Maybe that means something. You're both trans, too. Correlation ain't causation but there's something there, if you ask me." Technically Hope didn't ask him, at all. In fact, this entire conversation is the consequence of questions he asked them... and he's aware of that, but they're still answering his questions, so to Dirk, that means his input is wanted and is now being sought. Consciously or not, Hope clearly wants his help. Or at least doesn't not want it.
That his specific input is both useful and warranted was never in doubt. So here he is. Helping. Volunteering time and thought. That's friendly, right? He's being so helpful and friendly right now.
"So maybe he was up to something shady. Maybe it was creepy. He seems... really into preteens. Preteen girls." Hm. "That doesn't necessarily mean something sinister, though."
He's not just saying that to spare Hope's feelings. Not jumping to conclusions is an important part of the investigative and deductive process
"If the goal was to keep you out of trouble, then that makes plenty of sense. Again, I don't know what the deal is with you getting picked up so young. But the interval is probably a more meaningful bit of data. Like--this is just an idea, but I've read that four or five years is a pretty significant point in child development. That's when some of the higher cognitive skills start showing up. You got a personality, and some basic potential. Independence. I was about that age when my Bro ghosted the entire world, matter of fact. It's not lost on me that if I'd been more of a baby, I'd be dead. But I'm not. And I'm not because I had sufficient motor and reasoning skills to feed myself and problem solve. And then those preteen years... that's obviously its own thing. The thing before the Whole Thing. You really see what a person is about to be, around then. So--and again, this is just a thought, but I'm thinking maybe he was looking for something. Trying to produce something specific in his progeny, and when he didn't see it, he went out and tried again. Which would explain the intervals. Like breeding horses; you have to match the brood mare to the stallion based on a bunch of factors, but you can't guarantee anything. There's no way to be sure he's going to sire a winner. So you breed the mare to him, then the foal has to get born and grow up and go through training and in the meantime you're watching and waiting--and in horses, you keep breeding while you do. There's no reason not to, because they're horses and if they don't measure up then there's ways to deal with that. Glue, horsemeat, therapy horses for disabled children, you get the idea. And there's no downside to having more foals so long as you can keep 'em fed and exercised and keep paying trainers and whatever, so it just makes economic and practical sense. Now, it's pretty frowned upon to turn people into craft paste or sashimi, but maybe whatever he was looking for, he only needed to get it once. And he's only working with one stallion--himself. So, he picks his metaphorical broodmare--no offence to your mother, this is strictly for metaphor's sake--and once she's bred, he has to wait and watch for... whatever, once that foal is on the ground--that's you, here--and if he doesn't see it by a certain age, he tries again. I don't know what that has to do with him only bringing in the girls to keep y'all out of the way or whatever, I don't know what he was looking for to begin with--hell, I don't know that this is anything at all, it's just... you know, one idea. An example."
One of many ways this bizarre tale could feasibly make sense. Or not. Either way, they probably won't forget
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Which is all to say that they smile through it, pretending that it didn't hurt just a little bit even if it was unintentional, and don't comment on it beyond that. And they let him keep talking, and as he keeps talking, the smile fades. Gradually, sure, and then all at once when he calls their mom a broodmare. Again, not intentional, or so he assures them. Again, very hurtful. It's harder to hold on to that grace that they'd offered him this time, their hands closing into loose fists in their lap, but they remember how badly things had exploded the last time they'd fully lost their cool. (They remember the image that Shellustria had shown them of what might happen if they succumb to that anger.)
So they decide to respond to something else. The greater point, instead of the smaller ones. He doesn't know their mom—no one does; their mom's a nobody and likes it that way—so it can't be targeted. None of this is targeted. But the gooey chocolate center of the whole thing is what sits the worst with Hope if they think about it for too long. "I don't know if it's the best idea in the world," they start, thinking they sound startlingly composed for the situation, given the circumstances, "To think about my dad looking for something in me and throwing me away when he didn't find it when I already have so many problems feeling like I'm not good enough."
They don't want a confrontation this time. They just want to speak what's on their mind, say what they think is at least the way they feel towards all of this. Is it likely, if Dirk is right, that their dad gave them those problems in the first place? Probably. But there are some curtains that they're not ready to pull back yet.
"Maybe you're right, you know? Maybe that's it. But it's... like, I want to hang on to the good memories of that place if I can, and I can figure out the rest in therapy or something, you know?" They give this... weak little smile, like they're trying to defuse something but they're not even sure if the bomb is ticking. "I haven't reached out to my sisters in a while. Maybe I can finally ask why Anna was so pissed off all the time and see if she learned something that I didn't." The smile gets a little more real, that surprise coming back into their tone. "I haven't told anybody about my sisters before you. Not even Natalia."
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"I didn't know you and Natalia were close." A well-placed truth can cover for a lot. He might be interpersonally impaired but he's learned a trick or two from tangling with the media. And Old Man Harley. And
Jake--anyway. Who cares about Jake. This is big. This is huge, even. He's honestly a little rocked by it, but he has to keep it chill, play it cool."I guess this is an honour, then. Should I be saying something to mark the occasion, or is this more of a between-friends vibe?" There's a smile--or more like a smirk--curled in the corner of his mouth. It's very small, and it lasts only a couple seconds, but it's there. Then it drops, and he clarifies with a deadpan: "I'm kidding."
He made a joke. That was the end of the joke.
Now, of course, it's time to actually address something serious.
"Don't worry about what your dad wanted you to be. One, you don't even like the guy. And two, whatever he thought he was looking for, you already turned out better. So you failed to be something that's fundamentally insignificant--who gives a shit? He's looking for some mere feat of genetics and passed you by, but you're a full-ass Nova Knight. That's a calibre of proof his little progeny project could never hope to touch." There's a kind of pressure to his tone, an intensity that's paired with a jarringly street-level gesture at the end, when he tips his head as if to say: game recognises game.
Then, weirdly, he just... leaves it tipped at that angle to think.
"... also, don't go to a therapist. If his matrimonial spook-bitch is as deep a sleuth as you say, whatever you say to some third party could be compromised. He's got the money, she's got the skill to use it, and at least one of them is just looking for an excuse, I'll bet." There's no logical reason for Dirk to believe this, but instictively, he does. There's a bias there, taking Hope's dislike for them as cause to assume the worst of them. But it's also just how he thinks: his brain is already running off with the details, unspooling suspicions to lead him deeper through his mental labyrinth. Anna might be a safe source--especially if she's pissed--but maybe not. Wouldn't Anna then be surveilled more closely by Hope's father and stepmother? But if she had reason to be pissed, then maybe she does know something. And it would be idiotic for Hope not to ask.
This is where his thoughts are when the first firework goes off.
Loud, and sudden, and completely unexpected. He just about jumps to his feet--to react, to fight(?), to... uh. Do... something. Or nothing. As the case may be.
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How crazy is this, right? They went from crying and screaming and ruining this guy's eggs to having... to having a friendly conversation, truly, one with highs and lows and enough weird moments in it to stick with them in a good way and real, actual advice; with first reveals and serious words shared between the two (three) of them; with mutual understanding or at least an amazing facsimile of it. They'd actually done it. It's such a weird thing to feel right now, happy and relieved and like a normal human being. They dwell in that feeling like a blanket on a cold winter morning while Dirk continues talking about how therapists are a risk, and it's only the firework—bang!—that pops them out of the reverie and into the world again.
They look up at the sky, then over to Dirk who looks like he's just been jumpscared by an animatronic bear, and they laugh brightly. "It's just the fireworks! The show's starting." They glance back up, still feeling some special kind of way as the red and green trails of the first explosion fade into the sky. "You want to head out to the boardwalk and watch it properly?"
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And partially not.
The lack of bite is a little bit embarrassment--and not wanting any defensiveness to show. He is perfectly aware of how much worse that will make him look. But it's not just that. It's also a simple lack of fight in him. Against his better judgment, and without any conscious decisionmaking on his part (a rarity in its own right), he finds himself.... chilled out.
He's still himself--still intense, yes, and serious, and hyper-attuned and hyper-aware and all of that--but his nerves are strung just a bit less tightly, and for once he finds it easy to just. Drop it.
Good? Maybe.
But once dropped, he finds himself caught in the awkwardness of what to say after. It's been so long since he found himself talking to anyone for any length of time without escalation or tension that even the realisation itself is uncomfortable, and discomfort rises like a tide around him.
It was easier when he had a focus--Hope's family history is going with him now, as something to look into--but now it's weird. He's not sure what to do.
His instinct is to dip, but he doesn't.
He doesn't do that.
"Sure," he says instead.
He doesn't know why he says that. It made sense for approximately two seconds--to say yes, so as to demonstrate that he's not afraid of the fireworks--but the instant it leaves his mouth, he regrets it.
Not because watching the fireworks is a problem, but because it's with Hope, and he's already uncomfortable and starting to feel on edge about it, and--
And they asked him to go watch the fireworks with them.
They smiled, they laughed, and they asked him to go do something with them. This, the second realisation, is the one that really sinks him.
They're not upset. They're not trying to push him around or twist his words. They're just relaxed.
Happy, even.
They don't hate him.
It should be a relief--and it is, it's such a relief that it makes part of him kind of angry--but at the same time, the outcome was so inexplicable that it's hard to process clearly. It leaves him feeling numb and out of place, and it fills him with dread. He didn't do anything to make them not hate him right now. But they don't.
And he...
He would kind of like to keep it that way.
But he said 'sure,' so now he's going to the boardwalk. Leaving is the one guaranteed way not to fuck it up yet--this tentative offer of friendship that he's signed onto and somehow hasn't sabotaged immediately despite its fragile neonatal newness--and he just cut off his own exit.
He's either the stupidest motherfucker alive, or--
He glances at Cal. Anxious, and pretending not to be. "Ready?"
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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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