victory_road | [Saitama Voice] OK

Entry tags:

[Saitama Voice] OK

Who: Dirk Strider and anyone on the Sevii Islands
Where: The... the Sevii Islands
When: Post-Aether
Summary: [Pigeon Meme Voice] Is This A Vacation?
Rating: PG-13 for swears and whatever else falls out of Dirk's mouth

Dirk's relationship with the ocean is the subject of such elaborate metaphor that it more than qualifies as a uniquely expansive personal conceit. He can read the ocean better than he can other human beings, and (assuming one is not taking into consideration his cumulative and increasingly fractal selfhood) has spent twice as much of his life with it than he has humanity as a whole.

And yet in all the bullshit context I just typed, he's barely ever experienced the actual seashore.

So.

After rejecting the ferry as too crowded and unwilling to turn his back on an opprtunity he wouldn't otherwise have, Dirk Strider Hits The Beach (TM).

One Island:

So many ocean Pokemon resemble parts of the world he grew up with; the primary difference is that none of them are stark white or actively want to eat him. They're still basically the same, though. Wingull, for example, are loud, innumerable, and bold to the point of being obnoxious. Fish are... fish, and a lot of the same ones that live in fresh water are also present in the sea, which is.... just how it goes around here, really. It'd almost be nostalgic if he had any fondness for all the ways the postapocalypse was prepared to kill him.

This 'safe' ocean is almost precious. Twee.

He doesn't have a fishing rod, but he doesn't need one. Catching fish with his bare hands is one of those skills he has very little use for these days, but he is fully confident he still has it. He doesn't take off his shades before he dives in, still near enough to shore that his feet touch the bottom.

There's one particular kind of fish darting in the shallows, little ones that consistently zip off into deeper water or curve away from his human legs as he wades in. They all look ready to burst into tears. No weirder than anything else so far.

It doesn't matter what his motives are for catching them. Not because he doesn't catch any, but because he does. Just one.

A small, silvery-blue body that wriggles frantically in his grasp, its huge, plaintive eyes lighting up like headlights.

Suddenly he's surrounded, covered in them--engulfed, briefly, metaphorically drowning in literally hundreds of sardine-like bodies, converging around him and closing over him like a swarm of insects. The fish in his hands breaks free and disappears somewhere into the whole, a whole that breaks the surface, breaching skyward as one. A massive fish-shaped leviathan, the adumbration of 'fish' as a concept, shimmering and shifting like the visual likeness of seasickness, like the feeling of one's stomach just before you throw up.

Still cradled by the warm familiarity of seawater, Dirk stares up at the beast as its shadow eclipses his form, his face impassive. Sopping, stoic, and one (1) second from ~~disaster~~ impact.

"Hm."

Four Island: Vacation Daze

Taking this archipelago one island at a time is practical from a certain point of view, but the longer Dirk spends island-hopping, the more he feels himself unspooling from whatever central concept of his physical body he generally adheres to, travelling across the surface of the sun-speckled sea and on towards the vast horizon as--okay, do we really need to go over the infinite self ocean metaphors again?

Suffice to say he's getting lost while staring out over the ocean more and more frequently and for longer periods each time.

He can probably be found standing or sitting or just lying the fuck down somewhere in the sand, staring out over the ocean and totally checked the fuck out. He also last slept about 50 hours ago, but while he doesn't feel tired in the slightest, would anyone really be surprised if he just.... fell asleep?

Asleep or just Gone (TM), if he's been there for long enough, the local Pokemon have probably started to wonder what the fuck he's doing.

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Oh, the local pokemon have noticed.

Unfortunately for most people on Island Four, previous inhabitants and their randy starters have caused a small population crisis. Which would probably be fine if it was something harmless like Butterfree or Luvdisc. Alas, that was not the case.

Island Four, actually, has a burgeoning population of Voltorbs.

And a whole herd of them come inching out of the beach grass, near the sleeping Dirk. Also unfortunately for everyone on Island Four, these Voltorbs are from a particularly cranky progenitor. So they begin to crackle back and forth between each other, as if having a static-based conversation. After a few moments, they seem to come to a conclusion.

A conclusion that has them advance on what they see as a sleeping human.

On the one hand, Dirk is hyperalert at best most of the time--combination of an extra-precarious existence in his youth and a downright disastrous post-Creation integration to life in a society.

On the other hand, Dirk just doesn't know how to fall the fuck asleep. Between the thing where he spent his first fifteen years freely hopping consciousnesses between two different selves and the fridge horror of cognisibly ceasing to exist as a design feature, his sleep schedule is dictated by however long it takes him to physically collapse and drop out of the waking world, a process that usually takes days, plural.

So, like... he's not a light sleeper.

And Voltorb don't have feet, and therefore produce no sound of footsteps.

... yeah, he doesn't even twitch.

Some of the Voltorb advocate burying him in the sand. Like humans do. They seem to like it. Maybe that would be entertaining. Some of them want to scoot him into the ocean and see if he wakes up. But the rest argue these things would be potentially deadly to a human being.

They don't want to actually murder. Just... seem murderous on the outside.

That makes sense, right? That totally makes sense.

But they don't all come to a consensus. They're not a hivemind after all. Some of them set about digging furrows for the ocean waves -- to lead from the water to Dirk's feet. Some of the others go rolling away. Their purpose??? Unknown.

Honestly it's probably a good thing Dirk isn't really aware of all this. As fascinating as the Voltorb perspective on human behaviour and biology is, Dirk is not historically a huge fan of anyone playing chicken with his (im)mortality except him.

Yes, even in a context where he explicitly can't stay dead. Shut up.

There's only so much nonsense that can transpire before you wake a man up, though. So either he's going to wake up soggy and disproportionately upset about that, or--

Edited 2019-11-14 02:20 (UTC)

The orbs are Determined.

At least the ones threatening to bring the ocean to Dirk are. The others have disappeared for the moment. But if someone squints, they can probably make out a cluster of them on the sandy horizon. Bringing backup.

As if sensing the impending tattletale, the others start digging faster. How are they doing it with no hands??? Determination, that's how.

There are, arguably, worse things than waking up to the less-than-warm spatter of seawater in your face, but if you're arguing with Dirk about it, you'd have to argue pretty fucking hard.

Something something "childhood fears" something, probably. Not to imply those fears were anything but reasonable, of course, but the speed with which he reacts to having the literal ocean in his fucking sinuses is matched only by the comical anticlimax of his confused staggering, which turns into rapid pacing around in the sand as he realises that not is there no emergency, there's nothing at all except... uh.

.... some. Pokeballs? With eyes.

By the time 'backup' is there, the pacing is finished. Dirk is just... standing at the end of a water-filled trough in the sand, pinching the bridge of his nose over his shades.

"Backup" in this case, is a tired-looking Aggron and its tired-looking, rainbow haired trainer. Plus an Electrode, who is smiling, in contrast to the constantly-ticked-off orbs still digging determinedly. All three of the new arrivals regard the situation in much the same expression as the one they'd come to save.

With Shiro slowly lowering his face into his hands.

"Welcome to Island Four," is all he can manage for a good few moments. "Home of... Voltorbs. And Voltron."

Thanks for nothing, Jean. Wherever you went off to.

"Are you okay?"

Dirk lifts his head at the sound of Shiro's voice. It's not quite putting a shiver through his spine, but he felt that in a way he wasn't prepared for. Not with the burn of the ocean in his sinuses and the taste of it in the back of his throat.

Which is to say: he absolutely recognises both the Aggron and its trainer--not by the rainbow hair, as some might, but by other distinguishing characteristics. The mechanical arm helps, but wouldn't have been needed for that, not really.

It takes a couple of extra seconds for the words to really sink in.

His brow creases so minutely that it takes a couple of seconds for the crease to actually appear above his shades.

"Volorb.... Voltron. Defender of the universe? Is this some kind of joke?"

"Yeah, Voltorbs..."

He gestures at the crowd of angry pokeball-shaped critters rolling away from them. In a hurry. They've been found out! Time to scram! Shiro's Electrode starts rolling after them, just in case they get any ideas. They do not, but sill.

Both Shiro and his Aggron end up tilting their heads slightly. A joke? And where did he pick up on the defender of the universe part? Trainer and pokemon glance at each other.

"No? None of it is?" A pause. Before he adds, concern in his voice: "You okay?"

No? No.

Not a joke. Right.

"...."

He feels a little nauseous, but he's pretty positive that's the seawater that went down the back of his throat. He doesn't know how he feels about the fact that he's gotten worked up over a character from a 1980s children's show, but nausea isn't it.

"... I'm not sure. Gimme a sec."

He wishes he were. He really fucking does.

"Sure, sure thing."

But that's not going to stop Shiro from at least... trying to help. Or trying to do something supportive. He nods to Kuro, and the big Aggron circles around to the young man's other side. Just in case they need to catch him or something. Shiro's fairly sure he could, even with one good arm...

Except maybe a pokemon would be a less offensive choice.

Dirk's first instinct, as Shiro's Aggron start to move, is that he's being flanked. Then he realises he is being flanked--but not in a way that necessitates defensive action, as he'd first thought.

Realising that instead the idea was to... to catch him, were he to... what? Faint? Drop like a bag of absolute garbage?

His first thought is that if he's going to eat shit or be caught trying, he'd rather it be--Nope! Nope.

He can't take this. He really can't. He's going to--he needs to move. And he does so pretty much before he completes the actual thought, his legs carrying him over the sandy beach at a brisk pace, parallel to the shore--and away from the Aggron, incidentally, though not really on purpose.

"Walking it off," he mutters, which is less helpful than it might have been when Dirk is a quiet speaker to begin with. This is basically inaudible.

But, they don't follow him. Kuro looks worried, almost ready to follow, but Shiro puts his hand on the big guy's neck. Stopping him in place.

"Hey, all right," he calls after him. Part of him thinks he should just leave it there. Just let the guy walk off and do what he has to. But the rest of him just can't leave it that way.

"If you need anything, we live just up there --" He points behind him. Toward where the house is just barely visible between the trees. If you squint. And knew exactly what you were looking for.

....okay.

Well, Dirk has no idea what he's looking for, so he just looks at Shiro for a long--possibly too long--moment. Then he gives the guy a thumbs up.

He turns and actually starts to walk away, but maybe four yards down the coast, he realises.

Hey. No. What the fuck is he doing? Where's he gonna go? 'Clear his head.' His head is fucking clear. Dirk turns abruptly on his heel--

"Has anyone actually told you that Voltron is a Super Robot show?"

He was prepared to just watch the guy walk off. Really, he can't think of a better way to apologize for crowding him earlier. Spooking him earlier. Whichever it was. Shiro doesn't know for sure.

So he leans against his Arrgon, alternating between watching the young man's back and keeping an eye out for any more Voltorbs rolling out of left field. They don't come, fortunately.

Needless to say, he's a little thrown by the sudden question.

"Sorry, what?"

"Voltron: Defender of the Universe. It's an American transladaptation of the Japanese super robot series GoLion. Super robot is a subgenre of the mecha anime genre."

He repeats the information factually, like he's reading a wiki summary of it, like it all makes perfect sense, which it actually does if you know a single fucking thing about any of it.

The possibility that Shiro knows none of it has occurred to him, but he is not and in fact never has been exceptionally good (or even half-passable) at understanding what something looks like outside of his perspective.

"Not to be mistaken with voltorb, which is either a quasi-homicidal sphere or the world's least funny practical jokestorb."

Whatever he was expecting... those words weren't it. Not even by a long shot. Shiro's just sort of staring, trying to process at least a word in answer. Because it sounds so insane. He knows he went through... well, everything. He was there. He has the marks to prove it.

It has to be some kind of coincidence.

Right?

"It's not a show, not where I'm from," he says, slowly, his tone as level as he can manage. "We have a robot, but it's not an anime."

Dirk waves a hand quickly, cutting Shiro off before he can argue too much.

"Five lion robots that made one big humanoid, I know. Which is absolutely fucking anime, show or no show. But there is one. A show, that is. It's not that weird."

Dirk does not appear to recognise the problem here, which is (for once) not due solely to social ineptitude and/or flatness of expression.

It's... a very specific failure to understand, rooted partially in the fact that he played a video game as part of a comic that he personally resurrected in order to reboot and rewrite the text itself.

And partially in the fact that this is a place where the fucking Ghostbusters are people you can text any time you please.

John's been to three islands by now, basing his choices basically entirely on what sounds the most chill to him. He can come back and do serious gameplay junk later: right now he's just validly taking a break from his job. So far he's met some sort of kind grandpa dragon, collected a few berries with Alice, and purchased two mystery eggs from the breeding centre.

Well, one of them is a mystery, the other one is clearly a Togepi. Togepi seem to have Branding.

John's been personally carrying them around the beach in egg format because he is an Excellent Dad, but Adagio gets to be out and running madly around on the sand so that she doesn't get jealous of his new unhatched babies. Also because it's really cute, obviously. It's while walking to get closer to Adagio's frolicking and carefully watching his feet so he doesn't trip holding eggs in his arms that he specifically avoids tripping on a prone body. It's....Dirk? Down on his belly in the sand with his chin resting on his arms in front of him.

"Uh," says John, and crouches slowly down beside him, still cradling an egg in each elbow. "Are you doing okay?" He's fully dressed so it's not...sunbathing. "Dirk?"

The good news is that Dirk wasn't actually asleep, because falling asleep after checking out, mentally speaking, usually results in him waking up in a Weird Mood.

The bad news is that while he was more or less aware of John, he wasn't aware of John specifically, at least not until Jane's not-so-grand son is right in his fucking face, saying his name. Which is fine, although it's not something he was entirely ready for.

Without a strife specibus or any kind of (un)natural speed, Dirk thinks for a second and then sticks his tongue out at John. His expression doesn't change a jot.

That surprises John into a chuckle. He wasn't even really aware Dirk was capable of fun anymore, Kartana desk chair notwithstanding. It's something he's heard of in the abstract, sure, but Dirk keeps acting like a stodgy prick every time John is in danger of thinking he's kind of okay.

He guesses there's still time for Dirk to turn the tongue thing into something totally boring and shitty.

"I will take that as a Possibly," he announces, and actually lowers himself down onto his butt on the sand. Easier than crouching and it makes him less anxious about squashing the eggs. "How did the worm hole investigation go? Any luck? I lost track of you during the Final Boss."

"...."

There's a palpable silence, during which time Dirk is trying very hard to decide whether or not John is fucking with him. The Heir's sense of humour was really not something he was paying attention to when he had access to the John's inner workings. Juvenile, was most of what he'd understood of it. Does that include a poor man's told-you-so? He can't even tell if that's more or less likely than... whatever the fuck this is otherwise.

The corners of his mouth turn down.

"I'm still here, aren't I?"

"Yeah, you didn't break my glasses this time so my eyes actually work: I am aware you are lying on a beach like anime drift wood," John snarks, crossing his legs so he can rest the eggs there while he struggles his backpack off. He'll take them out for more walks later, when he's not having a conversation with a pretty volatile dude.

"That wasn't really what I meant, obviously they didn't take you back to Earth C. I was asking if you learned anything. Did you go anywhere? Did you get any useful portal notes or did the scientists shred them all? They did a pretty shitty job of hiding their evidence from what I saw so I thought you might have. Seriously, they had a ton of water and electric Pokemon, they could have set their files on fire or drenched them and they were doing everything by hand! They're definitely Pokemon antagonists, hehe..."

"...."

Dirk closes his eyes, which is not something John can see unless he's leaning forward to peer around the edges of Dirk's shades, and that would be pretty fucking weird so hopefully that isn't the case. If it is, well then John sees Dirk's eyes are closed.

Anyway.

He closes his fucking eyes.

Truth is, he hasn't really checked out the hardware he ripped out of the lab machinery. There's no real way to have done so out here, on the beach by ocean. He meant to do it when he got back to Rocket HQ back in Goldenrod. But he can't tell John that part, nor (he realises as he lies under the baking sun, thinking) will he be telling John any part of that at all.

"Nah. And I already apologised for the glasses thing." He sits up; sand sticks to his arms, dry though the ground is. It's hot, and he's been sweating.

"Not super looking forward to the told-you-so that'll be coming as soon as it gets back to Jane, though." His words imply a sourness, but their delivery is so flat and hard that it's practically fossilised.

Edited 2019-11-29 23:43 (UTC)

John isn't, so he doesn't. He just assumes Dirk is still listening to him as he talks and feeds his eggs back into his bag sylladex. They're away and his bag is back on his back by the time Dirk starts responding.

He rolls his eyes in response to Dirk saying he said sorry already, sure, ok well, it was a weird fucking thing to do so while he might have forgiven him for it, he's not going to stop ribbing him over it.

"Well, maybe there wouldn't be a told-you-so if you hadn't treated her like crap for months," he says, and then stops, and thinks. "Ok, there might still be anyway, but she'd still be trying to help you." He sighs, uncrossing his legs and sticking them out in front of him on the sand. A little bit off in the distance, Adagio is frolicking in and out of the surf, kicking her hooves up behind her joyfully. "Do you actually really think Jane here is totally irrelevant or is it the sort of thing where you know you have to go back so you are telling yourself only the one at home matters?"

Wow. Okay. The corners of Dirk's mouth turn down mid-motion, but he doesn't pause in trying to remove the sand clinging to his brown arms.

"....holy shit, dude." Really not gonna let that one go, is he? But instead of trying to explain anything this time, Dirk just... sighs. "You should know the answer to that by now."

Hnnrgh. A lot of the sand just sticks to his palms and gets into his gloves instead.

"....I know it's exciting for you to be able to call up your favourite franchise faces here, but you're the resident ghost here. Putting on your tinfoil hat isn't going to reveal the hidden conspiracy. There isn't one."

Well. There is. But not like that.

"If 'Jane' is relevant to any canons, it's not mine."

John sighs again and gets his backpack back off again to fish out the handtowel he got from PokeMom months ago and hold it out toward Dirk.

"She got really far, actually, so she is either just an earlier version of the one from the canon you came from, or she's from mine, which means she's one of yours just by default of you being a bunch of doomed Dirks." If Dirk hasn't taken the towel by now, either way John drops his hand back into his lap. "I don't know, I tried not to talk about it but it's hard to avoid it. As long as you're still here, it is pretty much just me, the 'resident ghost' and doomed or past Jane who will understand basically anything about the history of you and the Game. Mostly just Jane, honestly!"

Adagio stops mid-frolic and eyes the two of them before starting to amble across the sand towards them.

"So, whether or not she is relevant or I am relevant kind of doesn't matter at this point! Not while we're here."

Dirk takes the towel, but he doesn't do anything with it.

Instead, he's silent for a good two or three seconds after John finishes.

".... no. She won't understand anything."

His voice comes out as much dead as deadpan, and he makes no move to correct that.

The Game is so much a part of it all, and yet so much of it is past tense in a way that prohibits him from even trying to talk about it, let alone wanting to. And what would he even say? The part of it that she understands--no, not even understands, even what she simply knows--even the part of it that she really knows, the Jane he left behind to manage Earth C in his absence, was just a fraction of his own. A mere fleck on the surface of his knowledge and his experience, as his own collective Self.

"I get that you want to mediate. You want to fix this. Or fix me."

Oh, yes, he's noticed. You're not sly, John.

"And I get that that's because that's just what you do, but literally none of this is all that personal. It just is."

He finally takes the towel to his arms after that, like he didn't just slap whatever intended goodwill John was trying to extend right out of John's hands.

Sighing deeply, John flops backwards onto the sand, hefting his backpack up between his head and the ground. He's quiet for a bit, just mulling things over in his head.

"It seems pretty personal to me," he says, eventually, "or like you think it is safer to build a rude wall than change what you are doing that isn't working at all. You keep making things out to be super, uh, fatalistic but I don't think you're right about any of it. Or at least you're making sure nobody knows enough to know if you're right. Why won't you meet me in the middle here? Why does it have to be all or nothing?"

Edited 2019-12-27 05:23 (UTC)

"......"

Dirk rubs his face with the towel, pushing his shades up in the process, just briefly. His eyes are closed, though, and they never do end up being seen since the shades just drop back onto the prominent bridge of his strong nose after. They take a little tweaking to be fully in place, but not much.

He doesn't say anything as he bundles the towel up in his hands; then he stands, reaching out to drop it on John's torso as he rises.

"I see where this is going and while it's been fun, I'm going to have to cut you off there."

He expected something like this, but John really took his time getting here.

"There's nothing I can tell you that I haven't already said. And you don't want to fucking listen, so we're done here."

"I think I have made it pretty clear I do want to fucking listen, actually." He's swearing, but it's just to quote Dirk: John seems more tired than anything. Dirk actually standing up to end the conversation in real life is the active version of every text convo they've had so far.

"I could really easily have called you a lost dumbass cause by now. Maybe if I was a smarter guy I would have. What have you actually told me so far that wasn't just 'do what I say without question'? And 'oh shit oh shit, John asked a single question I have to end the conversation'?"

If John wanted to stop Dirk in his tracks, he's succeeded. He has failed, however, to elicit any stronger reaction than this:

"I've answered a lot of your questions, actually."

Dirk is aware, on hearing it, of how terse his voice is, how slowly he spoke and how specifically he enunciated it--even moreso than usual, all coupled with the fact that it's loud, for him. Which is still somewhere south of a normal speaking voice.

He's gotten very good at this, actually.

Has he? John kind of feels like he doesn't get a single thing about the entire situation. Aside from what Dirk thinks about Jane and the fact that Terezi might have eaten John's corpse and gone to space.

"I guess you're just bad at answers."

"Maybe you're not asking the right questions."

Dirk has answered far more questions from John than he has anyone in recent memory. It's not something he's proud of. He's been desperate, and he can see that all too clearly, whether or not John can. But with that in mind, he won't stand here and take being told those answers were inadequate when he's given John almost everything he's asked for.

John sits up at that and gives Dirk an unimpressed look, the towel sliding into his lap. "What are you, a genie? If I ask what the right question is is that wishing for more wishes?"

Adagio finally makes her way to the two of them and looks between them uneasily for a moment before wandering over and sticking her chin on top of John's head.

The thing is, no matter what Dirk might be feeling, it almost never shows on his face. It's not that he's doing it on purpose, not entirely. He'd practised extensively in front of a mirror just to perfect a few choice expressions. But in the end, he actually prefers his stoicism (conscious and unconscious both) to anything less under his control.

It's no small thing to say that the deadpan of his voice is even less deliberate, but he's gotten comfortable with that part of himself too.

"John. Don't be a bitch."

Man, Rose really does get it from somewhere, huh. Wild. John rolls his eyes dramatically.

"Take your own advice, dude!" He reaches up to rest both his hands around the top of Adagio's snout and she huffs and leans in a bit more. "I don't see why everything has to be such a big stupid secret."

"The importance of a kept secret exists at the expense of its secrecy."

This cannot be that hard to grasp. It can't. It's so fucking simple. He feels like--

--feels like he's talking to Jake. Round and round the point they fucking go, when it will stop, nobody knows.

"If I explained it to you, it wouldn't be a secret any more."

"Sounds fake," says John Egbert, Gen Z.

"Or at least super convenient for you! What would happen if it wasn't a secret? Or am I not even allowed to ask why I can't ask why you're keeping so many secrets?" He smirks in a way that tilts the corners of his mouth down, like he's trying to hide a smile. "If that is the case can I ask why I can't ask why I can't ask why you are keeping these secrets secret?" He chuckles after, completely incapable of maintaining a straight face for a single joke.

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[Saitama Voice] OK

FOUR

How many of these threads are just gonn be Dirk getting WASTED by Pokemon....

rest in pepperonis

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Dirk and the Five Stages of Grief

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I wrote this on the plane, Voltron trivia and all

dude how

It was just a really memorable wikipedia article I guess,

Four

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