[ text / action for new bark town ] (cw: blood, probably talk of death/violence)

[jurisimprudence]

A. text

TWO TH1NGS

F1RST
JOHN 3GB3RT
1F YOU'R3 H3R3, W3 N33D TO T4LK

S3COND
W1LL TH1S WORK TO G3T BLOOD OUT OF CLOTH1NG OR W1LL 1 N33D TO G3T 4 D1FF3R3NT PRODUCT FROM TH3 N3XT TOWN?

[Here she's attached a photo of the standard bottle of liquid soap that comes with the backpack.]

B. action

[If anyone's on the lookout for newbies, Terezi can be spotted sitting by a flowerbed next to "Mom's" house. She doesn't look any less human than anyone else here, at least at first. Though her ears have a bit of a point, they're hidden by her black hair, and the sharpness of her teeth is concealed by her pursed lips as she taps away at her Pokégear. No, if there's anything to raise concern, it's the fact that she looks like she's had a bad accident with some paint, or perhaps smashed a box worth of Grape-Berry Double Homicide Gushers against herself. Teal and purple mar her shirt and even stick to her face and arms in places.]

[It doesn't really smell like paint, or the corn syrup-laden fruit approximant of candy, either. It's dry by now, but one might recognize the smell of blood.]

[Her starter isn't far: a Gible wanders about the flowerbed proper, occasionally casting a concerned glance back at her new trainer in between devouring whatever blooms might remain at this time of year. She'll settle for withered stems, too; she ain't picky.]

Comments

[jurisimprudence]

1 TOLD YOU TO F1X TH1S!
DO3S TH1S LOOK F1X3D TO YOU??????

[She swaps to video, the first she's shown anyone what she looks like so far.]

[Olive skin, black hair, spatters of teal and purple, a set of new scars beneath. Her eyes are just as teal as her blood was, sclerae replaced with a much more human white. The teeth, though—that scowl is just as sharp as ever.]

What did you do?

[She's also still firmly in her teens.]

[cyclonely]

[ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Ok.

Wow, this is actually kind of a little intimidating? Like, Terezi is still a teen and John is an adult but he recognises this version of Terezi. This is the version that showed him Terezi was actually fucking cool as shit. Jeez.

(There is still obviously the part of him feeling a weird mixture of disappointment and relief. This Terezi doesn't know him basically at all, which is...something. Good and bad. B...ood.)]

ok, well i am going to also turn on video but i should warn you first that i am an adult man from the future.

[John pauses, giving her time to read, and after finger-combing his hair to look like slightly less of a disaster, turns his camera on as well and waves slightly. He's sitting on a couch, with a wall behind him.]

Hey... So the thing is, I did fix it? I get how it looks but also you died? So you missed the whole part where I followed your list perfectly and Vriska is alive now and she helped us win! This place is just some weird unrelated thing based on a different game.

[jurisimprudence]

[Slowly, gradually, Terezi's scowl fades. Confusion mixes in—adult man from the future?—but even that leeches out in the process of actually seeing him, of hearing what he has to say. Her focus darts across the screen, like a better explanation might be found in the background or just behind John's ear.]

[Vriska is alive now and she helped us win!]

[The video from her side swings up, past face and hair to a view of the sky—she's put the Pokégear down. Some sort of footsteps can be heard before Ambassador Berrymaw's face appears over the screen, mouth snapping with a babbling array of none-too-happy noises. She may not be the smartest Pokémon, but it doesn't take much to tell that her new partner isn't happy, and that it has something to do with the device on the ground.]

[Terezi doesn't even stop her for a good long moment. It's just—what's she supposed to think? Vriska is alive; her plan worked. They won! But she's... she's here. She's here, and she's human, and she's nowhere near any of the friends who all died around her. Even John is far removed from the dweeb she knew, older by however many human years, and separate from whatever reason she's here.]

[She mumbles,] Come here.

[Berrymaw's face lifts for a second. After one last look at the 'gear, she shuffles over closer to Terezi and out of view. Terezi picks the 'gear back up.]

Why am I here, John? And why am I human?

[Her expression is complicated, but she's keeping the worst of it locked up.]

[cyclonely]

[Oh jeez. It's a little hard to tell sometimes, but John thinks he made Terezi feel really bad. And yeah...he guesses that does make sense. Vriska's not here, after all, and it took Terezi an eternity in Paradox Space to finally give up chasing her. Not to mention....even if this is technically his specific reality's version of Terezi, he's still separated from her, by age and context. And he knows how he felt about that when that happened to him.

It's a relief that Terezi takes some time away from the camera, because John doesn't have to decide what to make his face do. It collapses from friendly and open to a very tired neutral as he watches a large mouth full of teeth that isn't even Terezi snap around over the camera. Haha, yeah. That probably is how it looks to her phone when she's texting. POV: You are Terezi's Phone. Nice.

John lets his head lean back and go clunk on the wall, and he stays like that until he hears the Gible stop babbling. He's softened his expression back to as generically friendly as he can manage by the time Terezi picks her Gear back up again.]

Uh...I don't really know why any of us are here. I thought it might be a kind of weird afterlife thing at first but there are definitely people here who aren't dead! I...think the human thing is to do with game canon consistency? Pokemon doesn't have anyone in it who isn't a human or a Pokemon.

[jurisimprudence]

[The look she gives him now is a little easier to describe: unimpressed.]

John, you already know what our afterlife looks like. Why would it be a strange little town with constant music in the background and a fake human lusus? And I don't see why this place being a crummy Fiduspawn knockoff should mean changing species! I will keep my dragon, but I was not even given an option about the rest!

[Her volume raises a bit there, and maybe 'unimpressed' isn't the right word after all, but this is so far from anything she expected.]

[cyclonely]

[OK, time to get back to this instead of just fighting with Dirk again. John does a big shrug with both his shoulders and the entire arm he's not using to hold his 'gear.]

I don't know! It can look like pretty much anything, right? And sometimes people don't realise they are dead and walk around with actual eyes for ages instead of the blank ghost eyes, so I thought--well, I have been in movies before with my ret con powers, why wouldn't I die and hallucinate a Pokémon world? I think it's a pretty reasonable mistake, actually!

[Man, he settles so easily into being rude with Terezi. His tone has gone all sassy and stuff. That's probably weird, right? It's weird to do that. He needs to try harder to not.]

There are, um. There are a lot of dragons here, actually. So that's pretty good, right? If you look up Dragon on the complete online Dex, you can see a lot of them!

[...no, he can't really pretend to be that cheerful about this.]

I don't think anyone who isn't an NPC had an option... There are definitely other aliens here who got turned into humans as well, though, it might be cool to talk to them? I guess...I can try to help with any questions you have about being a human, if you'd want that, haha...

[jurisimprudence]

[If there was any room for doubt before, it has been removed by the time she gets back to this conversation: Terezi is downright irritated. The big clusterfuck of everyone interrupting everyone saw to cementing that.]

I see that aging has elevated your sass levels and not much else! It took me only until that woman came up to hassle me to realize this wasn't the dream bubbles at all. It is not my fault that you couldn't comprehend the obvious.

More dragons aren't going to fix this, either, and I already know enough about humans! I lived with Rose and Dave for three years, John.