Dirk Strider (Ultimate) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
uber_marionettist) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
silph_co2020-03-10 08:41 pm
uber_marionettist) wrote in silph_co2020-03-10 08:41 pm
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...)
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...)
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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!"
no subject
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?
no subject
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
clarityimpulsion 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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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 recognised 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."
no subject
...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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.