IC Contact

[charcoalfeather]

"... Oh, Hi! You're talking to Rakka, but, uh, if you're hearing this then it means I can't answer the pokegear right now. Don't worry. Just make sure you leave a message and I'll reply to it!"

Beep!

Comments

[Video]

[charcoalfeather]

Okay...? [That's a... she's not sure what to say about that bit.] So, video games are for when you don't have anything else to do, or play with. That... makes sense I guess.

So then, you and your friends played it, and the world just... ended?

[Video]

[callbacks]

Yup. It was a pretty "rocks fall, everyone dies," situation. The game gave us enough time for us to spirit our own selves and our domiciles into the ether but that was it, everyone else on the planet was essentially utterly boned.

[He used to be able to tell this story with such ease, like he really didn't care. Like it didn't affect him. Really, how much had he ever known about the world to feel attached to it?

And maybe he still doesn't. Mostly, he thinks he feels cheated.]

[Video]

[charcoalfeather]

[Even as he explains it, Rakka couldn't shake the full implications of this story off of herself; Dave's world ended, from a game? Everything just... ended.

And she catches on, with some small worry, that this is affecting him. Rakka could only be polite and wait for a lull in his storytelling.]

T-that's awful! All the life on your planet? Every single person except for your friends, dying from some big event they couldn't stop...?

[It's difficult to wrap her head around already.] I can't even imagine it...

[Video]

[callbacks]

I mean...

[He trails off, then shrugs stiffly. He doesn't really know what to say. It's probably why he's never said much about it.]

Shit happens. Nowhere's perfect.

[Video]

[charcoalfeather]

[There isn't much one can say about it, besides the obvious. Which is why Rakka's mostly gone into silence.]

I... I know. But it's still horrifying. I'm sorry that it happened to you, Dave.

[She still can't believe it. All those lives...]

...Sorry. What happened next? You said that you ended up in an... anther?

[Video]

[callbacks]

Well, where I technically ended up was called the Land of Heat and Clockwork, or LOHAC for short.

[He spins his finger in the air to make a circle.]

It was this little planet made of lava and gears and melting skyscrapers. And it turned out to be one in a set of four, one for each of us, me and my friends, and it was full of monsters that we had to beat so we could gather materials to build up our home bases and get better at fighting. I figured out I had time travel powers there.

[Video]

[charcoalfeather]

"Lo... hac". [She's doing her best to commit the entirety of Dave's explanation to memory; the end of the world, new worlds? If Rakka hadn't already been put in a new world for her own experience, then she would have... still believed Dave. That's just the truth of it.]

O-okay. [She nods solemnly.] So, your world was just lava and.. buildings? But that can't just be it, can it?

[She's not accusing, merely curious for details.]

[Video]

[callbacks]

Mostly. Oh, and crocodiles. Or alligators. I don't really know the difference. Whatever they were, they were obnoxious.

[He settles back in his seat.]

Wonder what happened to them.

[Video]

[charcoalfeather]

Uh, crocodiles? And they were just living on that world with you? O-okay.

[... Has she taken a seat? Rakka should definitely be sitting down by this point.]

Do you miss it? It sounds so... dangerous.

[Video]

[callbacks]

[He's apparently unsure what to do with this question.]

...Not really.

[To both. It wasn't that dangerous, and...]

I wasn't actually there that long. I miss my apartment, I guess. Sometimes. Parts of it.

[Video]

[charcoalfeather]

You should, I mean... it was your home.

[Unless... The sentence sits in the bottom of her mouth, waiting to come out. It's something that translates into a look on her face.]

Unless you didn't like it there?

[Video]

[callbacks]

[He doesn't answer for a long four seconds.]

The air conditioning was always broken.

[It's getting harder and harder to dodge this shit, the more he realizes the size of it. The mass of everything he'd had to deal with, growing up.]

Anyway, not the point. Long story short, things happened, and I had to leave that planet to go on a meteor road trip with Karkat and my sister and some other aliens for a while.

[Video]

[charcoalfeather]

[Make that a noticeably long four seconds. There were many things going on here, and the more Rakka started to learn about it, the more she wanted to know. It's a dangerous thing, being curious.]

O-oh...

[That's rough, buddy.]

So after all that, you still couldn't stay in one place. You had to keep going? [She's amazed. Meteor road trips sound cool.] Just, how long did you have to travel?