silph_co | (no subject)

[[Dirk is making a rare video post, partially because he's just completed work on some kind of... something... albeit a something slightly more anime looking and triangular than you're probably picturing it right now. He's wearing it, too. Which is definitely a choice of some kind. There's a lot that's unclear here in the first seconds before he opens his fucking mouth and finally says something.]]

Don't say it.

I'm fully aware of how this looks.

It's a working prototype, it's going to be ugly. Emphasis here on 'working.'

Speaking of working, there's a museum of natural history in Pewter City. I know a thing or two about stealing from those, but I'm going to need hands for that. More than two or four.

[I don't give Carly a literal nod, but I think the figurative one is reasonably well deserved.]

That heist at the Safari Zone was a pretty crude affair--the mechanical equivalent of an unbaited box trap set with a stick and string, or a block of dry ice and a spring-loaded hammer. Frankly, I was really riding roughshod over reality back there, just trampling all over the flimsy fantasy figures of this featured fiction. I'm almost embarrassed about how shoddy my shit was.

Not this time.

[Now that I'm watching a screen, I can tell that having a 360+ view of my surroundings is going to take some adjustment. It's fine if I'm standing still, better if the cameras didn't have to constantly reposition and correct to cover any blind spots, but directional movement of any kind is going to be a real trip.

I intend that not be a literal one.]

I am back on my mastercrafted, flawlessly-tuned automechanical game. I'm operating with nanometric precision.

Which means I'm gonna need a count of heads before I can assemble this thing. You know, so I can allocate those heads to slot into the necessary moving parts.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Wow.

That's a lot of vi-] How can you be slightly better than a full 360....

Uhh, alright though... Anyway good to hear we're not doing the stupid thing! I can definitely provide plenty of help for that! [About half a second after this she realizes she's just signed herself up. Ah damn.]

Great. I knew I could count on you.

[Simple positive reinforcement. Works wonders.]

--and I meant 360 degrees as in the complete visual radius on a horizontal axis, but we don't live on a two-dimensional plane.

I don't have a perfect outward-facing field of vision, but after three cameras, things start getting kind of crowded. And on a practical level, I don't need it. Not unless I'm underwater or in the air, neither of which are going to happen on this mission.

Or if they do, we got bigger problems than my visual radius.

Huh, yeah that's fair.

[Dirk you need more than that to win her over. You didn't even win her over with that ever.] I guess we're going to have to do some recon though huh... ...hey wait can any of us even access Pewter yet?! I mean I guess Jack probably can...

I was there this weekend, briefly. More of a detour than a destination, if you know what I mean, but it's not hard to reach through Vermillion. You know, where the boat docks?

I just skipped the boat part while it was within my power to do so.

[Never again.]

Anyway, I've gone over the rolls, and the only one who should have any trouble is Connie, but if I can get Steve to cooperate with me, she should be fine.

[uh]

...Connie? Why's Connie an issue??

And well, I should be at Fuschia in... [...She gives an estimate.]

...so I should be able to use the warps...I'll just make an excuse about checking my 'apartment', honestly.

But seriously why's Connie an issue, she's one of the smartest in the bunch we've got!

[And she's not just comparing the kid to Steve here, trust her Dirk.]

[Smart. Yeah. Okay. I'll concede that. But I know how to weaponise my intellect, to find my advantage in more matters than those dialectic.

And I have the strength, the iron discipline and practised hand to back it up. But if this world has gods at all, they aren't interested in any of that. They're hanging out in little red and white balls and use humans to shape the world as only humans, apparently, can.

'Smart' isn't good enough.]

Because she's also the newest one, and the shortcut between Vermillion and Pewter is a tunnel complex inhabited entirely by angry little whack-a-moles?

Unless she speaks Mole Person, she's going to need a little more brawn to go with those brains.

[I shut up for a second, letting that hit before I close my point. Get it all tied up in a neat little bow.]

And if the moles can run her over like a rototiller, then the cops definitely can.

[Oiii oiiii.]

Then.........lend her a pokemon....

[It's so obvious Dirk. Why. Why didn't you think of this?]

She's experienced enough with pokemon who know what they're doing you know! I've had Misty keep her company for a huge chunk of her time here in Kanto so she wouldn't freeze!