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)
victory_road2022-09-29 02:45 pm
uber_marionettist) wrote in victory_road2022-09-29 02:45 pm
Dirk catchall for this tournament
Who: Dirk Strider and You!
Where: Tournament event stuff
When: Tournament dates
Summary: As many "not a normal human" things to do as I can think of for him to be doing
Warning: PG 13 to R rating for suggestive language and profanity, probably
A. After Round 2!
Call him a shut-in (actually don't, he'll argue with you), but it's not until after his second victory that Dirk actually takes the time to start exploring the event. It's big. Busy. Alive, in the way any large venue that's successfully hosting anything is alive. There's just so many god damn people, is the thing.
Dirk may have moved to Saffron City to place his gym, but he did so with every intention of being hundreds of miles above it all. Down on the ground with the rest of the human race, he's quickly overwhelmed. Trying to find Heather after the match is a fucking nightmare. What makes this actually tolerable is the part that one would expect to send him packing: the weirdly nostalgic presence of fans. He's a Champion, a Gym Leader, and now he's defeated a fellow Aurora League member--it's almost like being a god-celebrity again. And he's visually distinctive, albeit... er, shorter than much of the crowd.
Not that this encourages his contrary ass to give these poor people what they want. He does not give autographs or pose for selfies, does not answer questions or permit handshakes or even look their way when they call out to him. Not even a single solitary thumbs up. He ignores them utterly, staring straight ahead with a flat and stony expression, indifferent to any badgering or squealing or even the odd Pokeball lobbed at his head (presumably with the intention of soliciting his autograph, but he doesn't ask. Sometimes he doesn't even dodge them.)
Is there some deeper ploy to his behaviour, some secret method by which he's decided that this is a completely not-insane person thing to do? Yes. Of course there is. Because despite being as big of a tool as he can possibly be about fan attention, he doesn't ditch them, either. He could quite easily hop on his Mandibuzz and Fly his ass out of there, or simply run up a wall and flip onto the roof of the nearest building, leaving all but the most intrepid enthusiasts behind on the ground below. But he doesn't.
The fact that this act coincides perfectly with the fact that he's a little... uh, overstimulated... is just a coincidence. It's fine. He's fine, this is just how he operates. It's functional.
He definitely didn't just turn a corner too soon and crack his head against a metal pole.
B. Finals
The day before the final match, Dirk is... surprisingly not hidden away from the world or holed up in his hotel room. This may be due to the fact that he shares his hotel room with two other people, neither of whom he especially wants witnessing him speedrunning a turbo crisis of character, performance, and public image.
See, when one gets down to it, being the villain has a lot of perks. One of them is that successfuly playing the villain demands one's eventual downfall. Losing is a given. The grander and more spectacular a spectacle, the higher the stakes and the more beloved or unlikely the hero to whose efforts the villain must succumb, the better and more memorable the story. A swift and brutal defeat is just as effective. Or a prolonged, gruelling, even tedious contest by which the villain might lose only by a hair, or else prove himself weak and worthless and wretched after all... it doesn't matter. As long as he, the villain, loses, he can't actually lose. It's honestly genius.
Here is where Dirk fucked up: he forgot, in his excitement to prove his superiority, to cast himself as the villain.
He was so preoccupied with raising the stakes, analysing and deconstructing the strategies of his opponents with machinelike precision to engineer another victory... that his character slipped. It--and he--became sincere. And now, faced with the prospect of losing here at the pinnacle of a tournament he hadn't thought to give his narrative attention to... well. It's not going so well for him.
He's hoping to use the fact that he's in a public place to discourage prying--and if the presence of potential witnesses to whatever conversation one might get from Dirk Strider isn't deterrent enough, the fevered intensity of the energy radiating from him borders on the deranged. He's occupying a bench next to a pop-up shop of souvenirs, seated more or less directly in the middle of it; normally this would be pretty impolite, especially with his legs spread the way they are. (Yes, Dirk Strider manspreads. What did you expect?) But even though you can't see his eyes behind the sick signature sunglasses, the deep furrow of his brows suggests something pretty serious is happening behind those shades. He's sitting with his elbows on his knees, hands folded over his chin like fucking Gendo Ikari--but so tightly that it looks almost painful, and while he's trying (no, really, he is trying) to look preoccupied in a cool, pensive way... his normally impassive, immovable exterior is marred by the way his leg starts bouncing frantically any time his thoughts wander. Which is pretty much constantly, because behind those shades is an abyssal whirlpool of catastrophising and overthinking. This man? Is spiralling.
Or maybe this... maybe this is just what he looks like when he's strategising. It's hard work, pre-visualising all those battle-specific mechanics and moves conditions in that overclocked brain of his. Yeah.
C. Closed to Emporio... I'm so sorry Emporio
With the finals looming over him and his intended opponent--the one battle whose promised potential motivated Dirk to sign up for this whole thing to begin with--eliminated in the first round, Dirk has but one other competitor in his sights.
And, true to form, he's chosen to pursue his interest.... er, literally. And secretively. Across rooftops and behind corners, in shadows and otherwise out of sight. Without his flash step, it's not as simple as it could have been, but he has no shame about abusing the skills of a well-trained Greninja. He spent three years training SIN, the least he could get out of it is the freedom to surreptitiously hound people across one measly city.
He's watching you, Emporio.
What are you going to do about it?
D. Closed to Emet-selch and Hythlodaeus
Dirk is not remotely surprised to discover that Emet prioritised booking at the fanciest and most expensive hotel in the entire city. He's not. It's just that sometimes it feels like his surroundings are a constantly swinging pendulum between his preferences and Emet's--which is to say, the most luxe, high-end examples of finery and taste that money can buy, or a chaotic mixture of poverty-adjacent asceticism and hyper-exaggerated indulgence jumbled together with inaccessible and sometimes hostile results.
It's not hard to guess whose is whose.
Anyway, this is just how Emet does things. Emet is like Jake when it comes to amenities and the so-called finer things in life. The difference is that Emet is actually possessed of some experience with culture and not just going all-in on everything in every way, so he knows what he's doing and isn't just making decisions on price alone. So it's not like he doesn't have the coin for it (as they say in Emet's canon.) It just never occurs to Dirk to do that kind of thing himself.
So, whatever, right?
Except that's not what's giving him pause inside the door to their hotel room. No, what's giving him pause is....
"....at what point was this booking for only one bed?"
Where: Tournament event stuff
When: Tournament dates
Summary: As many "not a normal human" things to do as I can think of for him to be doing
Warning: PG 13 to R rating for suggestive language and profanity, probably
A. After Round 2!
Call him a shut-in (actually don't, he'll argue with you), but it's not until after his second victory that Dirk actually takes the time to start exploring the event. It's big. Busy. Alive, in the way any large venue that's successfully hosting anything is alive. There's just so many god damn people, is the thing.
Dirk may have moved to Saffron City to place his gym, but he did so with every intention of being hundreds of miles above it all. Down on the ground with the rest of the human race, he's quickly overwhelmed. Trying to find Heather after the match is a fucking nightmare. What makes this actually tolerable is the part that one would expect to send him packing: the weirdly nostalgic presence of fans. He's a Champion, a Gym Leader, and now he's defeated a fellow Aurora League member--it's almost like being a god-celebrity again. And he's visually distinctive, albeit... er, shorter than much of the crowd.
Not that this encourages his contrary ass to give these poor people what they want. He does not give autographs or pose for selfies, does not answer questions or permit handshakes or even look their way when they call out to him. Not even a single solitary thumbs up. He ignores them utterly, staring straight ahead with a flat and stony expression, indifferent to any badgering or squealing or even the odd Pokeball lobbed at his head (presumably with the intention of soliciting his autograph, but he doesn't ask. Sometimes he doesn't even dodge them.)
Is there some deeper ploy to his behaviour, some secret method by which he's decided that this is a completely not-insane person thing to do? Yes. Of course there is. Because despite being as big of a tool as he can possibly be about fan attention, he doesn't ditch them, either. He could quite easily hop on his Mandibuzz and Fly his ass out of there, or simply run up a wall and flip onto the roof of the nearest building, leaving all but the most intrepid enthusiasts behind on the ground below. But he doesn't.
The fact that this act coincides perfectly with the fact that he's a little... uh, overstimulated... is just a coincidence. It's fine. He's fine, this is just how he operates. It's functional.
He definitely didn't just turn a corner too soon and crack his head against a metal pole.
B. Finals
The day before the final match, Dirk is... surprisingly not hidden away from the world or holed up in his hotel room. This may be due to the fact that he shares his hotel room with two other people, neither of whom he especially wants witnessing him speedrunning a turbo crisis of character, performance, and public image.
See, when one gets down to it, being the villain has a lot of perks. One of them is that successfuly playing the villain demands one's eventual downfall. Losing is a given. The grander and more spectacular a spectacle, the higher the stakes and the more beloved or unlikely the hero to whose efforts the villain must succumb, the better and more memorable the story. A swift and brutal defeat is just as effective. Or a prolonged, gruelling, even tedious contest by which the villain might lose only by a hair, or else prove himself weak and worthless and wretched after all... it doesn't matter. As long as he, the villain, loses, he can't actually lose. It's honestly genius.
Here is where Dirk fucked up: he forgot, in his excitement to prove his superiority, to cast himself as the villain.
He was so preoccupied with raising the stakes, analysing and deconstructing the strategies of his opponents with machinelike precision to engineer another victory... that his character slipped. It--and he--became sincere. And now, faced with the prospect of losing here at the pinnacle of a tournament he hadn't thought to give his narrative attention to... well. It's not going so well for him.
He's hoping to use the fact that he's in a public place to discourage prying--and if the presence of potential witnesses to whatever conversation one might get from Dirk Strider isn't deterrent enough, the fevered intensity of the energy radiating from him borders on the deranged. He's occupying a bench next to a pop-up shop of souvenirs, seated more or less directly in the middle of it; normally this would be pretty impolite, especially with his legs spread the way they are. (Yes, Dirk Strider manspreads. What did you expect?) But even though you can't see his eyes behind the sick signature sunglasses, the deep furrow of his brows suggests something pretty serious is happening behind those shades. He's sitting with his elbows on his knees, hands folded over his chin like fucking Gendo Ikari--but so tightly that it looks almost painful, and while he's trying (no, really, he is trying) to look preoccupied in a cool, pensive way... his normally impassive, immovable exterior is marred by the way his leg starts bouncing frantically any time his thoughts wander. Which is pretty much constantly, because behind those shades is an abyssal whirlpool of catastrophising and overthinking. This man? Is spiralling.
Or maybe this... maybe this is just what he looks like when he's strategising. It's hard work, pre-visualising all those battle-specific mechanics and moves conditions in that overclocked brain of his. Yeah.
C. Closed to Emporio... I'm so sorry Emporio
With the finals looming over him and his intended opponent--the one battle whose promised potential motivated Dirk to sign up for this whole thing to begin with--eliminated in the first round, Dirk has but one other competitor in his sights.
And, true to form, he's chosen to pursue his interest.... er, literally. And secretively. Across rooftops and behind corners, in shadows and otherwise out of sight. Without his flash step, it's not as simple as it could have been, but he has no shame about abusing the skills of a well-trained Greninja. He spent three years training SIN, the least he could get out of it is the freedom to surreptitiously hound people across one measly city.
He's watching you, Emporio.
What are you going to do about it?
D. Closed to Emet-selch and Hythlodaeus
Dirk is not remotely surprised to discover that Emet prioritised booking at the fanciest and most expensive hotel in the entire city. He's not. It's just that sometimes it feels like his surroundings are a constantly swinging pendulum between his preferences and Emet's--which is to say, the most luxe, high-end examples of finery and taste that money can buy, or a chaotic mixture of poverty-adjacent asceticism and hyper-exaggerated indulgence jumbled together with inaccessible and sometimes hostile results.
It's not hard to guess whose is whose.
Anyway, this is just how Emet does things. Emet is like Jake when it comes to amenities and the so-called finer things in life. The difference is that Emet is actually possessed of some experience with culture and not just going all-in on everything in every way, so he knows what he's doing and isn't just making decisions on price alone. So it's not like he doesn't have the coin for it (as they say in Emet's canon.) It just never occurs to Dirk to do that kind of thing himself.
So, whatever, right?
Except that's not what's giving him pause inside the door to their hotel room. No, what's giving him pause is....
"....at what point was this booking for only one bed?"
A
And in fact, that is exactly what she did when the hubbub of Dirk Fans In The Distance(tm) reaches her ears.
Because no, despite her show of casual, comedic devastation in front of the audience, she actually is QUITE mad AND ALSO embarrassed. Not at losing. At losing to him, specifically. And she also, specifically, doesn't want to exist anywhere in the vicinity of a person who would shout the words 'DIRK TAKE A PICTURE WITH ME PLEASE', which she definitely just heard shouted about twenty yards to her left.
So she stands from the bench she'd been sitting at briefly, and melts into the
shadowssurrounding throngs of people.Until he walks directly into a pole.
At which point she un-melts from the surrounding throngs of people.
"Nice."
She says this before any higher brain function can remind her that, wait a minute, she was trying to avoid him.
OH WELL.
no subject
Nice? Nice what?
When did she get here, what is she commenting on? His crowd?
Oh. Wait. No.
Fuck.
Fuck again, as he realises it's too late to say anything in repartee.
Instead, he grabs the first available dunk he has, which. Isn't his best. But it's something. He's so thoroughly ignoring the people around him it would be legitimately impressive if the fact that someone is also yelling DIRK STRIDER!!!! directly in his ear didn't make his lack of reaction a little... unsettling.
"So. Five headbutts, huh?"
no subject
But, no, she was definitely remarking on walking into the pole.
To her credit, she looks, at most, mildly annoyed. She's not going to broadcast how sorely she's taking this loss, she knows that would be so much cringier than just taking it on the chin and moving on.
So those several-seconds-too-long pass with them just staring directly at each other in silence. At least until that person literally yells at the TOP OF THEIR LUNGS directly into his ear. At which point, she could react to his weird lack of reaction, or she could react to the screaming.
She goes with the latter. Because mad about losing to Dirk or not, that is just. Why would you do that. None of her fans have done that (possibly because of the somewhat-recent resurgence of that old video of her violent encounter with Officer Jerry, because no one wants to be on the receiving end of one of those kicks). Dirk what the fuck is wrong with your fans.
"HEY!" she barks sharply, leaning in to-- almost reflexively-- snap her fingers several times directly in their ear. "Where the fuck were you raised, in a BARN? Fuck off! Go take invasive videos from afar like a normal person!"
Then, assuming they don't immediately talk back to her or pick a fight, she looks back to Dirk and says, just as flatly, "Five headbutts, five flinches. It worked out."
ACTUALLY she had been internally panicking a bit and had temporarily forgotten about Thunder Punch. But Dirk doesn't need to know that!
no subject
The fan also looks surprised, and doesn't recover in time for any retort not to be hilariously belated, so it's really sort of an embarrassing moment for everyone. Except Heather.
Which just about balances out the smugness of Dirk's win against her. Long before he was a Champion, before he even had more than half his badges to attempt becoming a Champion, he'd tried to crash the League during a critical hour in the fate of this world--confident in his ability to make it through them and to what he'd hoped would be his way out. Sure, he'd failed, and also sat through both his own birthday and the final culmination of that crisis in fucking jail... but he'd never apologised, largely because he was still committed to the principle of his purpose.
This has not made him a popular member of the League, but it has made beating Heather pretty fucking satisfying. Even if he had to endure the mortification of just standing there and watching as one of her Pokemon just pummelled the living daylights out of a fish without much in the way of daylights to spare.
"A little more luck and you might've had me."
no subject
Perks of having grown up perpetually on the run, she supposed.
She keeps her steely glare on the retreating fan until they completely disappear, then turns back to Dirk, still visibly annoyed... but that fan had given her a good outlet for that annoyance, so she won't suffer the supremely uncool temptation to say something bitchy and sore-loserly to Dirk himself.
So instead of that, she's able to maintain a nonchalant tone when she replies, "Yeah, I forgot my lucky socks were in the wash. Would've been a whole different story if I'd had them on, lemme tell ya."
She pauses there for a second or two, weighing pride versus professionalism, then holds her hand out to shake.
"You're tough. It was a good match."
Another pause.
"... Fuck Trick Room, though."
I THOUGHT I'D TAGGED THIS I'M SORRY
Her hand hovers between them, and--in a miracle of social competence--Dirk reaches out and takes it. Firmly, clasping her hand in his without trying to actually shake it: it's a sort of bro-script move. Hopefully Heather doesn't mind the combo of slightly too hot, slightly sweaty leather and coarsely-calloused fingers. Dirk is more of the "hands on" type in all things.
"Like music to my ears." He lets go if she lets him, casting a bit of a glance aside... his fanclub is giving them actual room now, apparently afraid of Heather. He's not used to being crushed by fans, but most of his fans used to show enthusiasm via heckling, and the real crowd was for Jake. He missed it here, but back then he loved and hated it in equal measure. Either way, it's also nice to fucking breathe.
They're still kind of stressing him out, though. His eyes fix back on Heather... not that any of that was visible, what with the triangle shades. Frankly it probably looked more like he was just staring holes into her for 3-4 extremely weird seconds.
"Tell you what, if you need to get it out: free shot. Just one."
ITS OK I HAVE BEEN BURIED UNDER THE AVALANCHE OF LIFE, sorry it took me awhile too!
A brief flash of confusion crosses her face, though, at the offer.
"Free shot?"
If they were somewhere other than a convention hall, his meaning would have clicked faster-- but it takes her a minute.
Then she kind of laughs, incredulously.
"--what, here? Where are the cameras?"
The paparazzi would kill for footage of one Aurora-Leaguer punching another one out in the middle of a crowd, right after a battle.
no subject
This moment belongs in a museum.
The moment wherein Dirk stares at Heather blankly for a single beat, trying to figure out if the cameras are a positive or a negative might also be museum-worthy, but if so, it's probably for different reasons.
"Oh. Right. That's not your kinda celebrity. Unless I'm misreading the situation and it totally is. Either way, offer stands. Doesn't have to be here and now." He makess a fist with his left hand and lifts it, showing his knuckles demonstratively.
no subject
Two wild tryhards briefly experiencing connection in a world where connection is sometimes so elusive.
"... Huh."
She hadn't been expecting an offer to get even. Then again, she hadn't really been expecting anything about this conversation at all. Shooting a (fully visible, on account of no shades) at their surroundings herself, she narrows her eyes a little bit. THINKING IT OVER.
"Well, I like to think that I don't throw punches unless I want a real fight, but I gotta say, your offer is tempting."
DIRK'S FACE IS JUST SO PUNCHABLE.