silph_co | He's Going The Distance (Open)

He's Going The Distance (Open)

Who: Dirk Strider, OTA
Where: Goldenrod Rocket Labs
When: Early March!
Summary: If you want to steal some Lapras, you must first.... build a giant robot?
Rating: PG-13 for cursing and Dirk-like behaviour

Dirk's presence in the Rocket labs is pretty much continuous lately. Two full time jobs and a fervent desire to be anywhere but in a shared dorm randomly generated Rocket personnel made his whereabouts something of a guarantee anyway, but with the successful integration of his (un)patented BroPro and PokeGear, he's gotten started working on something specific.

Something... big. Something mechanical, maybe even automechanical. Something with huge cameras for eyes and a head bigger than him.

This is... fine. It's got to be fine because he must have approval for it; he certainly couldn't hide it even if he wanted to.

Most everything is joined to some kind of concave sheet metal layer, and as days and weeks pass, his upper half sometimes disappears entirely into this as he progresses to affixing wires, hard soldering the panels, and occasionally just ripping everything apart and throwing it in big noisy heaps of twisted aluminium and wrenched steel.

It looks like... a turtle shell?

...

(Sometimes, you can even find him sleeping in there...)

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Dirk reacts partway on instinct--instinct that may or may not be 'his' in the traditional sense but which is wholly his in every way that matters.

His hand shoots out faster than conscious thought, but in perfect time with the thoughts that motivate it. He doesn't grab the torch. He grabs Connie--scarred, calloused hand closing over hers roughly as he jerks her arm up--or tries to, anyway, the intent being both immobilisation and neutralisation.

Also, it's a direction that doesn't leave the flame on his robot or aimed in anyone's face, so at least his instincts had that covered.

Connie's reflexes have been honed after years of battling monsters. This gives her enough of a window to see Dirk's hand coming.

"Dirk, what the fuck-"

However, Dirk's are faster. He clamps around her arm, and if anybody else was in the room right now they'd be holding their breath. Then Connie's own training kicks in.

One: Turn and twist out of the grip, putting his arm in an awkward position. Turn off the torch, drop the pack onto the ground gently.

Two: Knee to the groin to stun. Take advantage of welding mask to headbutt him in the forehead as hard as she can at the same time.

Three: While he's reeling, throw him over shoulder, pin him to the ground, hold nearest deadly object to throat.

Dirk is faster, but he didn't have a plan. His instinct, be it 'his' by right or not, comes with a sense of authority, of physical and psychological power that simply does not fucking exist here. His thought, insamuch as there was thought, was preventative: he doesn't want Connie fucking up or with his fucking robot. Especially not without his explicit word to that order.

So his reaction was innate and even deliberate, but not necessarily planned. The problem with this is that when Connie whips around and twists around his grip, he's still drawing a blank on exactly he planned to do next. The knee to the groin, alarmingly, does not faze him as much as it should, but the welding mask to the face only goes better than a half-destroyed battlebot to the face in that it does not split his face open to permanently scar.

And the next second he's on his back, feeling that impact in his pelvis and spine, and there's a screwdriver at his fucking throat. The blow didn't knock the wind out of him but it definitely stopped it in his lungs for a metric second. It's been a hot second (idiomatic) since that last happened... is what he'd say if he'd not fought Connie a few weeks ago and ended up on his back in a ditch. His jaw clenches, teeth set against each other hard enough to actually affect his expression.

"My turn. What the fuck."

If this were an anime, an ellipsis would be slowly assembling itself above Connie's head.

There's a beat, and-

"OH MY STARS I'M SO SORRY MY TRAINING TOOK OVER ARE YOU OKAY OF COURSE YOU'RE NOT OKAY C'MON LET'S GET YOU TO WAIT I HAVE A BETTER IDEA ARTEMIS LET'S GO I NEED YOU"

A Gallade pops out of a Great Ball, gives Connie a withering look, and fires a chain of Heal Pulses at Dirk. Meanwhile, Connie continues pacing back and forth... and spies Doomlord and DA SHAREZONE in the doorway, Doomlord possessing her spare gear.

"No."

DA SHAREZONE somehow gives Connie a shit-eating grin, despite having no mouth.

"No no no don't you dare-"

Alack, alay, it's too late. The video is already uploaded, in all its meme-ified glory.

Connie slumps as she gets the notification, groaning.

Dirk squints behind his shades, grimacing as the healing energy beams directly into his fucking face. Connie's freakout is just noise to him, frankly, and he doesn't even acknowledge it; he does, however, react to the sound of his 'Gear notif (which... is the sound of an anime sword being drawn dramatically from its scabbard) and opens the video to watch it in stoic, poker-faced silence.

He watches it... like, four or five times.

The meme compilation videos based around his many fuckups and failures on Earth C were literally innumerable. A good percentage were focused solely on beheadings. One of the more asinine expressions of 'concern' for his welfare involved someone--he'd pretend he didn't remember who, but he does--suggested his curation and collection of these constituted 'self harm.' Which was absurd on multiple levels. He had never been more popular in his life.

So it is with a king's treasury of material experience that he can say this one isn't half-bad.

".... don't worry about it. But don't say I didn't fucking warn you."

Warn her about Rotom specifically, that is. In fact, he'd rejected her bike idea for expressly that reason.

If Connie knew even the slightest bit about Dirk's history, she'd be even more horrified and angry at herself than she is right now. Thankfully for Dirk, she doesn't, and so this broad won't be getting any more hysterical.

Connie raises her index finger to protest, sighs, lowers it, and groans. "Yeah. Yeah, you did. You were right.

"...I'm not releasing Doomlord, though. It's surprisingly professional when DA SHAREZONE isn't dragging it into one of its pranks. Although it can get a bit broody at times."

how is she making that noise with her mouth,

"Broody." Dirk echoes, but he's in the process of sitting up, bracing himself up with an elbow and reaching up with one hand to rub the back of his neck. Connie is now totally on some kind of totally unrelated tangent related to her Pokemon.

Defending them.

"I don't care about any of that shit right now."

He can already hear his 'Gear going off with replies to that video. (The notifications now sound like cartoon rubber ducky squeaks.)

But the only other thing to talk about is something he isn't entirely sure he wants to deal with, not with Connie still around.

Shitfucking son of a goddamn fuck. He has to do this without letting on why, let alone what. Okay, fine. He's done it before.

"You know why I grabbed you?" He keeps his tone level, but there's a hard edge to it, a severity that comes from a different place.

Connie will choose to believe in the best of Dirk at this moment.

"Because you were concerned for my safety?"

Connie is very wrong.

"Pain teaches a lesson."

His visage is unchanged. His answer, remorseless.

And there's no slip of the consciousness behind it this time.

Only a truth he's found consistent behind every iteration of his greater self, the only kind of lesson some of his selves have ever learned from. It's damn near the most consistent lesson he's ever taught, to anyone--intentionally or otherwise.

"Guess again."

Congratulations, Dirk. You've finally managed to hit one of Connie's nerves.

Hope you can deal with the consequences.

As soon as "pain teaches a lesson" leaves Dirk's mouth, Connie's fist comes flying towards Dirk's jaw at lightning speed in a simple straight jab. Before, her attack was propelled by instinct and training alone. Now there's anger there too, which means that she wants it to hurt. And that it's even faster than before.

"Say that again, fucker."

The thing about 'slip of the consciousness' is that it isn't a figure of speech so much as an unfortunate reality of his precariously positioned psychological existence. But recovering his composure and presented persona after is easier when you have control, when your thoughts mean something and reality matters. Salvaging a situation without it isn't impossible, but in the immediate aftermath like this--

Dirk isn't that far from where he was, mentally, when he first slipped up. He wasn't far enough from where he was, mentally, when he started walking it back.

When Connie snaps, he snaps back. His instinct, his psychological reflex to control the situation is translated, effectively, into regaining control of Connie. Which translates, laterally, into putting Connie in place. Which means putting her in her place.

He doesn't really think all of that out so much as it occurs within a single rotation of the gears inside his mechanism, the momentum of thought already generating movement; her fist is intercepted by the palm of his hand as it closes over hers, his other balled into a fist of his own, aimed directly for her midsection.

Edited 2020-03-24 03:07 (UTC)

Connie has known Dirk for months. She's sparred with him, messed around with him, rapped with him, and most importantly beat him. A fast learner like Connie figures out how to read somebody like Dirk pretty damn quickly; with all of those flips and spins and assorted anime bullshit he telegraphs his moves pretty hard.

So while she expected him to retaliate, Connie thought he'd try to take the moral high ground and strike back with words. Maybe do some acrobatic bullshit that got him out of the way.

What Connie didn't expect was for him to catch her fist like a baseball and punch her in the gut.

And no matter how smart or fast Connie is, the fact remains that she is a fifteen year-old girl and Dirk is a twenty-three year-old man.

She staggers back, thankfully having enough presence of mind to twist her hand out of Dirk's, and coughs as a bruise begins to form under her shirt. Fine. If he was cutting the shit, so would Connie. Twitching her left hand, Connie calls out, "Caledfwlch" with an alarming lack of emotion, and one half of a Doublade flies into it from a sheath on her back with lightning speed. At the same time, Connie makes a half-punching motion with her right, and the other three blades begin circling around it, tips joined together as they move faster and faster and faster until it looks like there's a drill where Connie's arm should be.

The ribbons of her Doublades touch her arms, and the swords immediately cover themselves in shifting black-and-purple energy as they use Shadow Claw in sync. This all happens in one and a half seconds.

Not wasting any more time, Connie charges Dirk, leading with a right hook from the more obviously-dangerous shadow drill... which turns out to be a feint as she slashes with Caledfwlch. It's questionable whether Connie has enough control left to aim for a nonlethal blow.

"I thought I could trust you. I thought you were like me," she snarls as she continues her assault with no pause. Normally, Connie fights with caution as she gets the measure of her opponent, giving herself time to think. But there's none of that here. No fear, no hesitation. Just pure aggression and rage.

"Big fucking mistake."

There's no venom in it, no anger, just. Flat callousness, at best. Dead emptiness, at worst. Dirk's thoughts have already caught up to his actions; he's fully absorbed what's coming. He knows exactly what's happening and it's that awareness that informs his response.

There's a clarity to it, the sort of penetrating view that he missed before, as clear view through reality as through himself.

Connie's trust, her idea of his being 'like her'... those were all illusions, ones he had no role in crafting for her, ones he's now in the process of breaking. It's a terrible way to be, a terrible facet of knowing the truth, of meta-reality, where the picture painted is fully under someone else's control. And the terrible truth is that there is no such thing as an unbiased narrator. When you tell a story, you alter it to suit. When that story is reality...

But this isn't real. The story she's written does not exist.

The name Caledfwlch hovers outside of the action, lasting longer in his conscious thoughts than her physical actions do.

It also gives him a hint ahead of her move. The real wielder of the real Caledfwlch has never one-handed a blade, of course, but it makes him see it before it's there; Dirk's used to watching for double pistols and trick shots, three swords out of four swords means the fourth is what he's watching for. Instead of horizontal evasion, Dirk rushes to meet her, shoulders hitched reflexively before he's in her face, inside the arc of her blade(s) and grabbing her by the upper arm--his left, her right, and throwing his full weight behind him. Without his flash step, he's too slow to be certain he won't be cut. Without the narrative, he can neither control that outcome nor know it, not yet.

But he really doesn't fucking care.

For the briefest moment after Dirk utters those three words, he can see her heart in her eyes. Suspended there with fragile hope and illusions of kinship. Then it shatters, leaving only incoherent rage and hurt in its place. Connie lets out an animalistic snarl of agonized rage as Dirk grabs her arm, howling, "IT MAKES SENSE NOW!"

She laughs, choking on her tears.

"ALL OF THOSE TIMES WE TALKED, RAPPED, SPARRED, WORKED, HUNG OUT, ALL OF THOSE TIMES YOU MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WAS YOUR FRIEND; THAT WAS JUST PART OF YOUR STUPID, IMMATURE IRONY SCHTICK, WASN'T IT! YOU WANTED TO PULL ONE OVER ME, MAKE ME THINK I COULD RELY ON YOU, THEN PULL THE RUG OUT FROM UNDER ME AND LAUGH AT ME FOR EVER TAKING IT SERIOUSLY! AND THE WORST PART IS THAT I FELL FOR IT, HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER! GOD, I WAS SUCH A FUCKING IDIOT!

"BUT HEY, MAYBE YOU'RE RIGHT! MAYBE PAIN DOES TEACH GOOD LESSONS!

"BECAUSE NOW I FUCKING HATE YOU, DIRK! ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU WANTED?"

Connie lunges forward to bite Dirk with the full intent of ripping meat from bone. But that's only a feint, because while Dirk may have forgotten that these swords are fully independent entities, Connie certainly hasn't. So while she was screaming her broken heart out at Dirk, Calesvol, Caladbolg, and Caliburn pulled back, out of sight.

Then the three swords ram into Dirk's stomach with the combined force of two Iron Heads attached to a drill bit.

Good news is that the sheer force of the attack is enough to knock him across the room before the blades can turn his insides into a puree. Bad news is that the sheer force of the attack is enough to knock him across the room. Still screaming, Connie thrusts her palm out, and all of her swords begin rapidly rotating around it with tips pointed inward, firing a double-strength Flash Cannon at him. Thankfully, it doesn't sting nearly as much as it could've considering the abysmal Special capabilities of a Doublade, but it'll still hurt if it connects. But whether or not the Flash Cannon hits, it fulfills its purpose: obscuring Connie from view for long enough for her to grasp Caledfwlch and Caliburn in her hands, wrap herself in shadow, and move.

Dirk might've held his own against four blades. But what about twelve?

What happens next should be familiar to Dirk. Three silhouettes of his opponent charging him, disappearing, reappearing, phasing straight through his counterattacks if he launches any, flawlessly parrying if he finds the real one, all with blindingly fast speed. Not quite superhumanly so, but damn close, spurred by adrenaline and rage and heartbreak. For what it's worth, the Excaliburs can't use any other moves while maintaining the Shadow Sneak, so the only thing they and Connie could do is fight with blade and fist. Considering that she and the clones have an extra two floating swords to work with, though, that probably doesn't matter all that much.

And the thing is,

she

doesn't

stop

.

Even as her tears fall on the floor of the lab.

Connie can't see Dirk's eyes, so she's always been blind to the way he sees hers. The shades are for protection--but not from light, and not for his feelings. The polarising chemical is a metaphor here. For a different kind of polarisation at work.

That she has him so wrong hardly matters; the truth is such that it makes no difference in the end.

He's not his daughter, he's never been a deft touch. He's not subtle. It's his way or the high way, and his high horse, and--

"What I WANT is for you to knock this shit off." He grits it out through clenched teeth. Words spoken seconds before disaster.

She unloads on him, verbally and emotionally, psychologically. Martially.

Her love, her anger, and all of her sorrow.

He had, strangely, already prepared for it. Because he knew it was coming, because he expected it--not from her, though; from Dave, from his simultaneous son and brother, in the words exchanged when the inevitable finally caught up to him. Hearing it from Connie is unexpected, bordering on nonsensical. The confusion and frustration of it are meagre forces in this tempest, buckets of water thrown against the tide in either direction, but jarring enough that it opens a rift, parting the sea and dividing his ocean of self, a thousand splinters pressed together misalign and the depths of their fracture multiply twofold, threefold.

And the impact is several times that of his fist in her gut, and he hits the hard lab floor with a grunt that can barely be heard over the sound of a human body striking concrete. He knows how to take a fall, he knows how to tuck up and roll, but as his breath is driven from his lungs, there's a familiar lightness, the distant, disconnected panic of a brain that wants to draw breath but has no power to.

This is a sensation he's used to, the kind of blow he's been taking over and over since he was a literal child. The flash cannon is a sting, a searing, just another kind of pain.

He's up before he's breathing, a torque wrench in hand, shades askew. The muscle layers of his entire ventral abdomen are taut with the pain that swells beneath the skin before a later, darker, deeper bruise.

"I knew you'd hate me. And now you do. So what? What I want doesn't matter. Are you listening to yourself? This obviously isn't about me."

He has no time to elaborate on what that means.

Her strategy is one so intimately familiar it's only a few blows before he recognises it as his own; he's never been on the receiving end before, he can't keep up with it. Not now, not like this, not any more. He parries, he mounts an offence, he misses, he parries. Now a mouthful of his own blood sits on his tongue. His nose creases, levator labii wrinkling as his face lines with something that is not ire and not disgust either. Maybe it's just the effort--he can't strategise, he can't escape. The only thing keeping his back from hitting the wall is her sudden appearance behind him, again and again.

"It's about you," he grits out, and even that costs him. The tip of a sword (which one?) pierces his arm just shy of his tattoo, blade sliding beneath the skin and slicing under the muscle beneath it before withdrawing soundlessly, his blood joining her tears on the floor.

Edited 2020-03-27 03:13 (UTC)

Who's finally here?

Carly's finally here.

Through a combination of Double Team and Shadow Sneak, something abruptly slides across the ground to launch up a variety of shadowy 'arms', from behind Connie and behind Dirk both. The pair are hauled up into the air and distanced immediately, and among it all is one very, very, loud sound.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

Ah yes, that's Carly.

"-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAWHAT!! ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH YOU!!! BOTH OF YOU WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING!"

Unfortunately for Carly, Connie is currently too full of incoherent rage to respond properly, and instead continues to flail at Dirk as he's pulled away from her. Connie pulls her hands back, preparing to launch the Excaliburs at Dirk...

Fortunately for Carly, the sudden jolt knocks a Pokéball off of Connie's belt, which pops open to reveal a very concerned-looking Gengar. Adler takes one look at Connie and raises her arms, projecting waves of Hypnosis... that soundly put Connie to sleep.

Hooray?

Dirk is no stranger to being afflicted with sudden, agency-denying effects via means magical or technological, but he's still a tick behind the reaction curve. He's pushing the very human limits of his ability just keeping Connie from putting a sword through his so-called vitals--

Not that it matters, a fact of which he is very much aware and to which he is very much refusing to concede her. He might not fully understand the reasoning, but he has few relevant doubts about Connie's intentions to skewer him right now (more concerning to outside perspective might be his willingness to accept that course of (re)action without question.) The relevance of death, however?

In this place, the question to Dirk is whether he would ever even experience the final blow. He doesn't intend to find out.

He's fully committed to powering through the assault, and so focused on--if possible--either wearing her out fully on defence or breaking through Connie's offence that he continues trying to do just that for a good few seconds after Carly starts shrieking, which is about two or three seconds into being summarily hoisted. A long time, for him. But his former reaction times in combat are as much honed as they are now unattainable.

Then all at once, the arrested state of his reality breaks. He almost doesn't show it, but all that focus and ~~clarity~~ impulsion snaps like a tensile cable, with the associated havoc that ensues--experienced not as a catastrophic failure, but a crumbling, a rising cloud of detritus from the seafloor covering, enveloping him and his thoughts, a darkening shroud coming between him and those same thoughts, a single synaptic (mis?)fire distancing him from himself in the same collapsing moment.

"Fucking shut up and stop screaming. This is nothing. Nothing was happening. Now put me the fuck down."

Edited 2020-03-28 06:10 (UTC)

Mimikyu's arm is now covering Dirk's mouth. It'd go to bind Connie more, but Connie's asleep.

Now Carly's just mad. More than mad.

Furious.

"Nothing?" she repeats, voice lowering. "You call this 'nothing'? I shouldn't come in and see someone attacking you with enough force that I'd think they want you dead, DIRK! Not someone who you got along with so well, you both stayed up for days just to talk! This isn't NOTHING!"

Also, she's not putting you down yet, because she knows damn well the minute she does he's going to be locking them all out.

She will, however, uncover his mouth. ...After she's done.

"What. Happened."

Now she's done.

Dirk's expression doesn't change with the clawlike shadow hand over his mouth, but for those few precious seconds he can't speak, he has time to fight with the heavy dragging force of his thoughts, the weight of separation from--what? His broken realities? His recognisable? unrecognisable? His?

Consequences pulling the inside of his head down into benthic depths.

"It's nothing because it's over."

The fact that she's using her Heist-Specific voice on him is not subtle, and he finds her choice of time and place equally impressive and insulting.

"I was the instigator here. Just--"

Just what? Just fucked up? Just became someone he _{didn't recognise_{d when he ^didn't recognise he was doing it? Again? Just fucked up? Again?

"--misread the situation. Which pissed her off."

....

"Guess we didn't get along so well after all."

.......

"My bad."}}

"I don't care who started it, Dirk!" Ah, and there's her normal voice again at least, familiar, possibly even grounding. Carly rubs her forehead, right between the brows, sucking in a breath. "It's not about who started it, even if that contributes, it's about actual resolution, actual agreements..!"

...She sighs.

"We're talking. Later," she adds, slowly lowering him down. "But know this!" Before he's entirely on the ground, she leans in- voice somewhere between typical and 'low'. "I'm not letting you lose something good, over the first major disagreement you've had since meeting them."

He's on the ground. "I'll be talking to Connie as well. No matter what it is you said, there's no reason to attack someone with sword pokemon over it!" Gawd! "...But until then I'll tell the other privates this lab is off limits." Just for you. You mess.

She'll carefully lift Connie in her arms (when was she that strong!?), Mimi-chan retracting their own back into the shadows.

She'll give Dirk time to say something- anything- but if it's silent for long enough, she's out the door.

It should matter. That's his first thought. It should matter who started it, because in Dirk's experience, there are no actual agreements, no resolutions. Everything that exists now existed before, and will exist again. There are no new conflicts and no permanent endings. Nothing new under the Sun.

That's how it is, how it's always been, how it... is.

Is he an extension of that, or a perpetuation?

A man in perpetuity.

His expression does change when she leans in, brows rising first and then furrowing together while the corners of his mouth pull down, an exaggerated displeasure and maybe even discomfort--it's hard to tell, given the situation.

"I said that it was misinterpreted--" he starts, but she keeps talking, and for a second they're talking at the same time, actively hindering either of them from understanding the other.

He stops, still frowning dramatically; internally, he falters, confused. How did she know--? Connie's Gengar is still out and his eyes glance off Carly towards it.

It had not, until that exact moment, occurred to him to wonder whether or not Ghost types could read his thoughts. Given the way Psychic types reacted--but could Ghost types be less averse by their nature?

....

Great. Fine. It doesn't matter. Yet.

He doesn't want a fucking conversation anyway.

"Yeah. You do that."

Dirk pushes a quiet threat into his voice with the dismissal. He feels... childish, suddenly. But he never had to deal with this as a child.

"And take her fucking Gengar with you."

Honestly, Carly is ready to throw something.

She won't, but the point stands. So instead she rubs her forehead, before finally, almost saltily adding-

"Dirk. I don't think Connie's pokemon want to be anywhere near you, right now. So that probably won't be a problem!"

But anyway- there she goes.

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He's Going The Distance (Open)

YIKES (TM)

ripperoni in pepperoni

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this got dark?? and stupid.

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