[text/video] un: @skull

[ryuji]

[A few days after gravity is restored to the station, Ryuji returns to the mess hall from Haru's garden to find a small robot flipped upside down, panicking through a series of morse beeps and boops, which- okay, that's kind of cool, and quickly figures out that the paneling and suction entrances of the little guy means it's probably meant for filtration and cleaning.

Looks pretty study, looks... waterproof, maybe? He lends a hand to get him right side up and it starts slowly moving forward. Ryuji takes out his communicator and immediately films this as it happens, because, why not?

He posts two videos on the network- the roomba moving down the hall and one, a few hours later in the fitness center as it crawls from the edge, and dives right in.]

Oh shit! Are you supposed to do that?

Whoa, whoa- I don't know how to fix you if you--- WHOA, COOL.




Hey, sup?

Just lettin you guys know the pool looks crystal clear now. All thanks to this little dude.

I figure I should give 'em a name but uh

Everything that comes to mind is kinda lame

Anyway, I think it's good? Anyone wanna give it the first try?

[Complete with file0033.png - a picture of crystal clear water.]

Comments

[ryuji]

[And this is how Simba-chan became the most important character in Reverie Station.]

What? No. I'm not letting any of those assholes near my son.

[oculusriffs]

ok dude
im not gonna let you get away with calling him that without hearing your best james earl jones first
so go on mufasa
tell simba to remember who he is

[ryuji]

[Oh. my god?]

Dave, what the eff.

[Okay, he looks around the room, just to make sure he really is alone. Like, really alone. No one hiding in the corner waiting for this shit. No one recording it. This is a special, private performance.

He turns on the video feature again, and like all good, young, impressionable post-millenials, he vines the shit out of it. Ryuji makes his voice deep, bellowing, echoing and lets out his best attempt at something truly horrendous.]




SIMBA. I AM YOUR FATHER.

[Holy shit the acoustics in this room are awesome.]

[oculusriffs]

[if you want to get technical, Dave is in fact a millenial, even though Ryuji might also be older than him? timelines are stupid.]

[he watches the vine on repeat a few times, thoughtful, examining it like he thinks he's some sort of Siskel or Ebert, or a sommelier carefully considering the best wine to pair with a shitty Mufasa Vader impression. see the icon.]

[..... eh. Dave gives it a six out of ten. it's not the best impression he's heard, but Ryuji gets bonus points for botching the line.]

congrats on your new son then
i guess that makes you both a roomba dad and a cat mom

[ryuji]

[Rude. He poured his heart and soul into that razzie award winning performance.]

Cool, so I'm like 3 months away from my midlife crisis when I realize I can't afford to send either of them to college.

Great.

Thanks, man, you've given me all these other problems I have to worry about.

And besides, I know how you feel about hot moms so I'm a little freaked out atm

[Oh... my god.

Simba starts to try and climb up the side of the pool. Is he done? Is he finished for now? Ryuji leans in and helicopter parents for a second, snapping a pic and sending it over.]

I'm.

I'm so freaking proud.

I could cry.

[oculusriffs]

[............]

[Dave just. stares at this series of text messages for a minute. did ... did Ryuji really just say that? did Dave really just accidentally imply that? he's always been a bit oblivious to his own bloopers, but.]

[wait, is it actually a Freudian slip if you just outright refer to yourself as a hot mom? maybe if he pretends he didn't read that, he'll stop entertaining that train of thought.]

[(he won't.)]

dont you need a space high school before you start worrying about space college

[ryuji]

[And then space PTA, space parent-teacher conferences. 18 years, 18 years. She got one of your robots, she got you for 18 years.

Does Ryuji know the deep level of dissonance that he's caused by dropping that line? Hell no. He'll just continue on ruining Dave's life. No biggie.]

I guess you're right

Maybe it is too soon to start workin' on my dad bod

Hey, I just kinda realized something. We're both high school dropouts, right?

That's punk as shit.

[oculusriffs]

[it's kind of incredible how much has already been accomplished in this so far short but rapid-fire, for them, text conversation. the roomba got a name. there was a really bad movie reference delivered via space vine. they've determined that Ryuji is a hot mom.]

[excellent work all around.]

pretty goddamn punk yeah
i never made actually made it to high school
but junior high dropout doesnt have the same ring to it

[ryuji]

Wait so you're technically a middle schooler?

[Explains a few things tbh]

[oculusriffs]

[ryuji]

[oculusriffs]

put in that lame sounding context
yeah i guess thats my highest level of education
i left home three years ago

[ryuji]

[Anyway...]

Holy shit

You haven't been back in that long?

Wait, you're my age right? I'm 17

[oculusriffs]

im 16

[he's not really sure how to answer that other question though. he could be straightforward, but even if he never really gave a particular shit about what happened, it seems like casually mentioning that all of human civilization was destroyed by meteors would be too heavy for this conversation.]

[so, he decides to go with the end result — his sentiments, ultimately, on the matter.]

dont worry about it though
as you can imagine ive had a lot of other bullshit to attend to
plus rose was there
so it wasnt like i was missing family or anything

[ryuji]

You know that thing where you tell someone not to worry about shit and that just makes em more suspicious, right?

But yeah, I imagine you had enough to deal with from what you told me

Still, 3 years? With the same person? Family or not, how'd you not kill each other lol

[Coming from an only child.]

[oculusriffs]

nope never heard of it
but nah me and rose argued but i fought with other people a lot more

[if anything, Dave's the annoying sibling of the two, what with his constant questions and being in her business basically always and calling her out when the situation warranted. of course, he did that even before they knew they were related.]

it wasnt much different than being here in that sense
you fight and then you figure out your dynamics with each other
or you just go full tilt and drive everyone beyond batty

[ryuji]

[Let me just pull out the management textbook here.

Forming, storming, norming, performing.

Proceeds to toss the book out the window.]

You? Fight? Couldn't imagine it.

But hey it sounds like you matured since then so that's kinda good

Unless you haven't and you're just like secretly always holding back the urge to go full tilt

Wait what does a full tilt Dave look like

[oculusriffs]

[lmao.]

hey thanks i think
but are you suggesting you want to see me fly off the handle
just do this olympic swan dive right off the edge into a pit of molten davefury
forge myself a gold medal out of all this delirious anger
no offense but i dont think you could manage to piss me off that much

[Ryuji is way too goofy. like John, assuming he isn't bringing up Howie Mandel. but even then, Dave never really got all that pissed at him.]

[ryuji]

[Jesus christ.]

...

Y...es?

You know, I'm not really sure anymore.

I've kinda lost the will to do anything

I'm just so effin stunned by that wall of bullshit

Davefury?

[Better to be pissed off than have your AJ pissed in, I guess.]

[oculusriffs]

man youre overreacting
that was barely even a pebble of my usual bullshit

[don't tempt fate, Ryuji, because he will actually build a wall of bullshit to rival those Game of Thrones guys and their bigass wall. and Dave doesn't even know what a Game of Thrones is.]

[ryuji]

A pebble of bullshit.

Do you hear yourself talk sometimes

You seriously just dropped a double meaning on top of this poo pile and lemme tell you first hand it REEKS

[He says, feigning anger to cover up his subtly unsubtle fondness.]

[oculusriffs]

i think you know the answer to that question

[it's already bad enough that his filter is so lacking that he can't stop himself from typing shit like that. but at least he doesn't have his iShades? those utilized a voice-to-text function, and i like to imagine that Dave got himself into all sorts of offscreen shenanigans with them, across all of his time loops.]

[if anything, though, he's low-key glad that there's at least a few people here in space who will put up with him. and that particular sentiment is one that will have a hard time escaping these brackets, because Dave is bad at admitting things like his feelings — so it just manifests in the way he tries to bug the people he's grown attached to. lucky Ryuji! (?)]

but anyway mufasa
its good to see youve got the pool situation sorted
any activity that isnt this stations actual bullshit is a plus

[ryuji]

[He is pretty lucky.

Not in the grand scheme of luck, like a universal type of luck, because that remains pitifully low-balled into the negative region, and especially not so because he's stuck on a station that's trying (???) to kill him, but... could be worse. He has a lot of people here, Dave being one of them, that makes him not feel totally lost all the time. And then, in Dave's case specifically, he wouldn't mind sitting around listening to his absurd jargon anyway. iShades or not. Probably would enjoy, even.

Gross.]

Yeah, man. Thanks.

I think I've decided that... y'know, I probably can't do a lot to figure out what the hell is going on here. Can't fix it either. Are you an engineer? Electrician? I sure as hell ain't. But if there's something I can do to make it better around here for us to just.. like, live? Hell yeah. I'm gonna be all over that.

But yeah. Simba's a special case anyway. It's not like I planned on the little dude being there or anything. I just set him right side up and he did all the work. He's the true hero. :)

[oculusriffs]

[what the fuck are these weird feelings and how do they work.]

[Dave wants to try to be reassuring, to say that he thinks Ryuji's probably underestimating himself and that he has a lot more to offer than just being the space entertainment — and even if not, that's not really a bad thing, either.]

[but, again: what the fuck are these weird feelings and how do they work. so what he does come up with is just. also kind of weird.]

isnt that basically movie simbas story arc though
like he was just lying there beeping uselessly and eating bugs until sky mufasa set him right
and he got back to doing the shit he was supposed to
i spent a long time in a situation similar to this one with a really small group of people
looking back on it i think we could have used a mufasa
someone to keep steering your bs toward pride rock you know
and keep you focused on your goal
maybe we could have

[could have what, Dave? that text is already sent, and he's suddenly realizing that he's heading toward the last subject he'd meant to bring up. what happened to him back in their session.]

[quick, you idiot, think of something else.]

not gotten into the weird fights we did
i guess what im saying is speaking from experience
that sort of things just as important as engineering or whatever

[ryuji]

[He sits there, at the edge of the pool, as the texts come in, one by one. He didn't really realize he was asking for help from Dave, or even encouragement. Ryuji thinks that he's just being honest about stuff, not incredibly self-aware that the things he was saying were particularly harsh or self-deprecating. And although he's never really struggled with identity that much, he always found himself questioning purpose.

So here's Mufasa, in the clouds, looking down at the son he's left behind, a pivotal scene that changes the entire direction of the movie, gives the protagonist the will to reclaim what's always meant to be his, and Ryuji's... actually glad that he's alone right now so that he doesn't have to feel the need to brush everything off or be a stronger person than he really is.

And here's Dave, being incredibly fucking obtuse and roundabout in a message that doesn't need a metaphor scrambled on top of it to get its point across.

Incredibly obtuse, actually.

He smirks. Whatever, it's his style. Time to brute force that shit, though.]

Can't really look out of your own eyes and see much more on your face than your nose, yeah? When you're livin' in your own head it's hard to know that you're doin' anything right, but you gotta keep going anyway.

Dave... you're not that great at this stuff, so it was probably a pain to say all that

But I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that... thanks for trying to steer me to pride rock, too. I wish I coulda been there for you and your group so that I might've been able to see the world through your eyes. Kinda corny, right? Sorry.

I keep gettin the sense that whatever the hell that game was... was a lot harder and bigger than the things you wanna talk about. And it's cool. You don't have to. It's the past anyway, and that doesn't matter a whole lot.

Or maybe it does? I don't know what the hell the point of any of this shit is, honestly. So you're right. Screw being an amazing engineer, I'll keep being myself. And uh. You keep being you. I think you're pretty damn great. So if you need a Mufasa to push your ass around, let me know.

Anyway, this has seriously filled my corny meter to an astounding 110%.