He's Going The Distance (Open)

[uber_marionettist]

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...)

Comments

[uber_marionettist]

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."

[fortuneglass]

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.

[uber_marionettist]

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 <sub>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."</sub>

[insidescoop]

"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.

[uber_marionettist]

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."

[insidescoop]

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.