[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

[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%.

[oculusriffs]

[well, at least he knows he got his point across, even if, now that he goes back and looks at that wall of text he sent, it was kind of ... lame as all get out. man, embarrassing. he doesn’t really regret it, though; after all, it’s just his usual dumb ramblings presented in the form of a pep talk. the movie reference was more topical than anything, but also, it might be a symptom of the fact that there are movie-loving dorks from back home that he’s missing.]

[and it’s a good thing Ryuji is just as, if not more, lame than Dave just was right there. he admitted to it, after all - and, maybe there’s something like a smirk on his end, too, scrolling through a reassurance that was more straightforward, but no less sincere, and no less longwinded, than his.]

yeah that was some record setting cheesiness
its fine though

[so, yeah. Ryuji’s message has been received.]

i dont mind answering questions if you have em
just cant guarantee ill have an answer for you
there was too much that never made a goddamn smidge of sense

[he says, buying himself a way out of a question that might hurt Ryuji more than inform him, just in case.]

[ryuji]

True story, there's this cheese shop not that far from Yoyogi Park back home. It has this giant cow statue in front of it, right? Uh... this is kinda hard to explain since we're communicating in some sorta shared language, but I'm assumin' you don't know Japanese.

Anyway, the word for "cow" and "delicious" kinda sound the same? And that shop's been there for pretty much since the beginning of time. So when I used to pass by it as a kid I'd freak the hell out and call the cow "delicious." Like, super embarrassingly. Top of my lungs. And mom would be like... RYUJI-KUN NO.

Man, I loved that cow.

That story had no damn point btw, but I think you oughta know just how cheesy I can actually be

[One day he'll stop saying literally whatever's on his mind. He wasn't stalling for time or pushing what Dave said aside, just that it was a seriously compelling urge to be embarrassing on multiple levels.]

Anyway, what's the craziest thing that happened? Like, if you could pinpoint one giant "screw this shit" moment.

[oculusriffs]

[........]

welp
you basically just went and outcheesed a literal cheese shop
thats a kind of talent i cant exactly argue with or deny
so congratulations

[there's a pause, though, as he thinks of how to answer that question. really, there's so many possibilities, so many things that were so completely idiotic that he had no other possible reaction but the most Dave Strider vine in existence.]

would the entire game itself count as an answer
but i dunno
powers had a way of manifesting themselves in really fucking dumb ways thanks to the games mechanics
because of a rooftop mishap i broke pretty much every single sword i came across
snapped some real legendary pieces of shit in half with the friendliest of shoves
rose also put me to sleep by lobbing a ball of yarn at my head
which she naturally used at the most inconvenient moments possible
i had to do a lot of really dumb stuff to maintain my time loops too
like go back and give my past self a thumbs up so that id go along with a plan thatd lead me to needing to give myself a thumbs up in the first place
keeping track of absurd tiny details like that is at least one reason why i quit time traveling

[ryuji]

Dude, it goes so much deeper than that. The word for "map" and "cheese" are also really, really close. So if you ever needed to find your way out of a cheesy situation...

Nevermind this is getting embarrassing

[And then he slams on the brakes.]

Wait

Is Rose an olympic knitter?

[This is relevant, I swear.]

[oculusriffs]

what
i guess if your idea of olympic knitting includes harnessing an ogre by its face with a pair of knitting needles and yarn and riding it down a magic rainbow waterfall like a theme park ride
then yeah rose is probably the best in her class
she also knitted a laptop cozy and modified this stuffed bunny that got caught in a really stupid time loop
i never understood the laptop cozy thing though
why the fuck would a laptop need a cozy
its a laptop not an afternoon teapot you serve with scones and other british stereotypes
but i never understood half the shit she got at anyhow
seers are notorious for being infuriatingly mysterious and obtuse