dataBURST: IC Inbox

[breakaleginhalf]

Hey, it's Gil. Either I haven't got my phone on me, OR I'm actively ignoring you. Text me if it's important, try harder if you're dying. TEXT | VOICE | VIDEO | ACTION

Comments

action / memshare - shortly after the party

[placeheld]

[ Artemis has been careful about letting his memories spread far and wide since he realized what happened. This particular one is right in the apartment, though, in a bouquet left in a dish on the coffee table - he judges that to be safe enough even after he pricks his finger, and leaves it there without bothering to warn Gil. ]

[breakaleginhalf]

[Gil did warn Artemis about leaving shit around the apartment. So when he wants to use the coffee table he picks up the bouquet and yeets it out-- no he just drops it on Artemis's bed. He's not that much of an asshole.

Still flinches when it pokes him, though. Fucking thorns.]

cw mild gore

[placeheld]

It only takes a moment for the apartment to fade out and be replaced by what looks to be an enormous, open-plan living area. A large section of the floor has been covered with a tarp, and you're seeing things from the perspective of someone laying on it. Your vison's greyed out and missing entirely in one eye; you can't think about why any more than you can think about the way your head's no longer the right shape or the bloody foam on your lips. The thoughts won't come.

"Fix him."

Artemis' voice comes from somewhere indeterminately above you, and a few seconds later there's a whine and a piercing sensation along the crack in your skull. Before that can even finish mending itself, a boot's nudging you over onto your back to treat your eye and your lungs, your hands and feet, the bruises around your throat. They don't heal entirel - that takes time - but enough that you think you'll live as long as they don't do it again. You want to. You don't.

"There. Stop."

The regenerator stops, and there's a sound of shuffling as the Peacekeeper holding it moves away. You braces for another beating - the third? Fourth? - but it doesn't come. Instead someone walks over and kneels beside you, running a careful hand through your hair before taking a handhold and jerking it up.

Artemis' own face looks down at you, with only a few faint wrinkles and a neater hair cut to distinguish from the Artemis that Gil knows. His expression is blank, with only the barest hint of contempt in his blue eyes as he studies your face. Something in it must displease him, as the hand in your hair tightens and yanks at the still-healing wound.

"I believe that I've made my point. Your intelligence has always been a disappointment, but even you couldn't fail the same lesson four times in a row." The tone's quiet, even, blank and relentless. Your head is tilted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, catching your - Artemis' - bloodied reflection. Past it, a city inside an enormous pyramid is lit in neon and buzzing with activity. It's beautiful. You've always loved it. You try to focus on that as he starts to talk again. "Just in case, allow me to make myself clear. This is my city. I built it to save humanity, and I will keep it safe forever. Everything in it belongs to me, and there is nothing to escape to outside it."

There's something there, almost a fondness, but off in a way that sends chills down your spine as he looks down at you. You struggle like an animal caught in a trap, but you don't have the strength to resist the hands holding you down, and you can only listen to the inevitability. "I am a god. You are a body."

$senseloss, via text

[senseloss]

Your human duplicate is currently dead.

[breakaleginhalf]

...wait

what

how the fuck

[senseloss]

It's my fault, and I'm sorry.

A memorial, latter half of doppelganger event

[push_that_pesticide]

[ It would've been easy to overlook.

A couple of polaroids of a blood stain, a dish with shards of what smelled like chicken bones. Some candles, casting pixellated light onto the wall. Flowers, already rotting, probably from last month, dug out of the trash. A shrine. Or art installation, maybe, in the alley where Gil and Bugsy had slain the beast. ]

[breakaleginhalf]

[Gil hadn't intended to walk back past the area they'd killed the Beast. He's just had... a lot going on. These whole two weeks hadn't let up once, and so he's taking a walk in the hopes that he can clear his head by just existing in the middle of all the bullshit.

The smell of the rotting flowers catches his attention first, drawing his attention automatically, but the chicken bones beneath it is what gets his curiosity, and he follows the scent to find the small shrine.

...he can smell the faint hints of Bugsy's unique odour too, now that he's paying attention. And when he kneels down, to get a better look at the photos, something about the shape of those bloodstains makes his stomach curl unpleasantly.

Oh.

He leans against the wall opposite the display, still staring at it, and lets his legs fold beneath him so he's sitting tucked into the corner. It'd be hard to see him from the alley entrance, as he just sits and stares at the shrine to his former self.]

text, un: $$$MEATSLACKS$$$, shortly after FINDING GIL DEAD IN THE STREET

[karmacomecalling]

GIL

GILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGILGIL

[karmacomecalling]

GIL ANSWER ME ARE YOU THERE?!?!?!

3/????

[karmacomecalling]

GIL ANSWER ME RIGHT NOW IT'S YAKKO THIS IS IMPORTANT ARE YOU DEAD

4/???

[karmacomecalling]

GIL FELONIUS RYANSON PICK UP YOUR PHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

or i'll STEAL YOUR UNDERWEAR AND THROW IT ALL OVER TOWN

5/???, voice

[karmacomecalling]

[this stubborn little—]

ANSWER ME!!

6/6, 7 hrs and fifty text msgs later, all some form of "GIL!!!!!!" or "YOU BUTTHEAD"

[karmacomecalling]

[okay


okay


he's not okay but he's...understanding now]

okay first off sorry about your underwear

that wasn't a doppelganger in the alley, was it

pls answer when u wake up

please

left in the ticket holder at the diner, before NPCS return, folded once over with Gil's name on it.

[mandelbrotz]

(small block letters, written in purple ink. There's doodles on the outside. It was easier to write to Coda.)

Next time I'll listen
I just really want to be close to someone, someone who understands what it's like
like I said-- but I realize your trauma is greater. The thing about the suffering olympics would be more for certain weight classes, yeah? I get that now.
I'm sorry
I think you're cool, really want to talk to you again sometime soon.
Everything is connected-- but also nothing is connected.

- amanda

$unzipped_fly, text

[push_that_pesticide]

where are you?
i went looking for you and couldnt find you anywhere in trojan
look we can talk about what happened or not if you hate me just
please be okay

[breakaleginhalf]

[The message gets left on read for a long while.]




I'm okay. Not in Trojan, so.

I don't hate you.

I'm sorry.

text from $rowdy on 5/15

[mandelbrotz]

i know you probably don't want to talk to me but i wanted to tell you that i was going to go break the wand. or use my new nature powers on it

but then i thought 'WWGD'

so here. i probably would have died, so thanks. that's sincere.

IMG ATTACHED

[breakaleginhalf]

Please don't WWGD, historically those decisions have been absolutely horrible.

Except that one, do that.

But can we cycle back to the fucking
New nature powers
Real quick

text; $astral

[soulbonder]

Hello, Gil. It is Astral.

Under normal circumstances I would not contact you like this, but I'm uncertain where else to turn. I understand you're Coda's friend.

I suppose I should first provide some context: I am what most people would call an empath. Given the appropriate conditions, I can perceive the emotions of others. A week ago when I visited your home, I sensed something that felt [he rewrites this a million times] complicated.

I know a little of what Coda told me about themselves and how they're a changeling. What happened? What did they do to cause them so much pain?

You're an adult and their friend, perhaps you could do something. I worry they think I'm too young to help.

[breakaleginhalf]

[Seeing Astral's username pop up in his notifs (and somehow Gil's not surprised that he doesn't think of something more original than his own name) gets a fresh wave of irritation out of Gil, and he's prepared to simply delete it or respond with something trite and spiteful in response.

Then he actually reads it.]

Question, first. Did you come here with empathy powers or did you get them from the arcade here too?

But no, I do actually know what you're talking about, funnily enough. And knowing Coda, I can assume why they're not telling you, and it's not actually because you're a kid.

(I mean, probably not. It could be, they're very protective, but that's my general assumption.)

It's not my place to tell you about how they came to feel like that, that's incredibly personal for them, but I'm okay with saying that that's just, like. Self loathing.

["Just".]

They haven't told me, anyway.

[He deliberates on the next part so long that the typing bubble will be floating there for nearly a full minute on Astral's end.]

I'm a changeling too. That's why I look the way I do.

delivery @ trojan

[lostintransmition]

[Mono's gifts are sometimes hard to parse; they simply appear in a myriad of places, easy to mistake as garbage at a very cursory glance. Well, it's where most of them come from.

Delicately rolled up at the very edge of the lips couch is a red rag that seems to have been torn from something. It's a little dirty, frayed at the edges with dangling threads that have come loose--but with all of its worn weathering, time and use has smoothed it down, and it is very, very soft.]

[breakaleginhalf]

[Luckily, despite the smell of garbage baked into the cloth, Gil can smell Mono's unique, almost staticky odour laced on it, and something about that is deeply charming. (The softness is also noted, and Gil can't help rubbing his nose in it for a few seconds to test it.)

There's a large TV cabinet turned wardrobe-slash-bookshelf in his room; it's a pleasant dark navy, almost black, so Mono's present is a bright red blossom of colour on one of the middle shelves, taking pride of place above his laptop's usual spot.]

delivery

[lostintransmition]

[Now there’s a little lighter on the couch, the metal casing a bit scratched up but gleaming with a vividly iridescent shine like one of those “holographic” clothes. The flame gutters when opened. There’s not much fluid left, but it’s still functional and would probably be fine if refilled.]

[breakaleginhalf]

[This one, Gil keeps in his satchel. And after Bugsy helps teach him how to refill it later, it's staying there. It's neat. Plus, you never know when you'll need a light.]