TEST DRIVE MEME: The First (Fixed Setting)

[thecrows]

TEST DRIVE MEME
HOW TO: Post with your character in what will be a fixed setting for the first round! Do a top level, respond to others! If your thread is substantial, it can be used as a first-person on your application! Remember that this is not game canon, and everyone is welcome!

You were just ushered into a large park by a murder of loud and insistent crows who somehow manage to get the gate shut behind you before they fly off. The park is awfully green for such a dead-looking town. It's dusk, and things are starting to get a little noisy at the edge of the tall iron fence that surrounds the area. There are gazebos, cobblestone pathways, gentle slopes, and of course, the lake and the island with the large, dead tree. It's full of crows, and if you stare at them, they'll all stare back. Feel free to take a load off on one of the many iron and wood benches, but the gates to the city are closed!

This does not, however, mean you are barred from ghost-watching as night progresses. Remember, they won't see you!

Comments

[plushcrush]

[Well. There's Dave. That's a thing Bro wasn't expecting to have to field today. Honestly, he hadn't had a game plan in mind for dealing with it ever.

A lot of what he's been watching through the dreambubbles has been Dave, of course. Dave had been the main focus of his attention while he was alive, and death hadn't shaken up his priorities much. (He'd been kind of glad to be dead once he realized how many Daves across time and space there were for him to keep a fraternally proprietary eye on; just following Dave and Davesprite concurrently was rough, and that didn't even get into timeline bullshit.) So he's more or less current with the latest episodes of Dave Strider Dreambubble All-Access Broadcasting.

Which is totally not the same thing as being prepared to meet him face-to-face, seeing him face-to-face. The kid's grown a lot, physically. Bro's seen it, but not like this, in relation to himself; the last time he saw Dave, the kid was about level with his pecs. Now suddenly he can eyeball Bro's chin. Still lanky, though, Bro notes; apparently Dave's never going to match his broad shoulders, even though the strength difference between them has definitely shrunk.

Dave's grown a lot emotionally, too, and that's where Bro is actually - in a place he would never admit, not with his dick in a vice - shit scared. Dave's older, wiser, hasn't needed any support from Bro in three years and has powers way beyond anything Bro's got on his side of the court. That's no small thing when Bro had demanded respect from Dave as much for the fact that he could kick his ass from hell to breakfast as for paying the rent and putting food on the table. Neither of which is relevant anymore, now. Dave's moved on and become way more than he was, while Bro's been dead and pretty much static. Plus there was, you know, the whole kicker where Bro got his ass handed to him by Jack - you couldn't lose a fight much harder than dying.

Dave has always known him as older, stronger, cooler, superior. Whatever tarnishing that brotherly hero worship had gotten with Bro's death, well - it had stung for Bro to think about, but at least he hadn't had to face it personally. No Dave asking him how the fuck could he have lost, Bro was supposed to be goddamn invincible.

Now Dave can ask him that. Hell, now Dave can see that he's surpassed Bro on pretty much every level(except irony; Bro will be twice dead and burning in Hell before he gives up the irony crown). Whatever admiration, whatever ideal image of Bro Dave's had since he was little...Bro's afraid the reality of him can't live up to it. Not anymore. Dave's outstripped the hero in his head, and he's going to realize it sooner or later.

And the greatest kept secret of the Striders is just how damn much it matters to them, what other people think. Doubly so when it comes to other Striders.

Of course, that's precisely why Bro gives not the least sign that he's surprised to see Dave, or that he's maybe not ready for this. Even Dave, who knows all the tiny Strider tells, won't see anything more than a sudden, matching undercurrent of tension through Bro's body, like someone hooked Bro into the same low-grade electric current Dave's on.]

Sup, Dave. Those footie pajamas?

[chronologistics]

[Sup Dave.

If he were any less a Strider, Dave would have probably let himself experience the weird, almost-queasy sort of shiver that wants to course down the back of his neck and along his shoulders. It doesn't sound right, hearing that name, in that voice.

It doesn't sound wrong, either.

What's equally not-right is the realization of how much... smaller Bro is now, although smaller probably isn't the right word. Bro isn't actually any smaller than the last time Dave had seen him, even if it had been after he had been turned into a Brokibob. Dave knows that. Dave has just gotten taller. And while Dave is (very keenly accurately) aware of exactly how much time has passed since his embarrassing attempt at giving his Bro a sort of viking's burial, the impact of it hadn't really hit him until now.

It probably never would have ever truly hit him, if it weren't for this. That's the shitty part of it; the part that makes Dave wish there was a wall nearby to punch until his knuckles were raw.

Dave doesn't pick up on the tells. Time is memory's worst enemy, and Time is something Dave is not lacking. But if there's one thing he does pick up on, it's the tension, less because it's coursing through Bro's body, and more because it's creeping up his own spine. Unlike Bro, the corner of his mouth twitches as he sets his jaw, and gives his shoulder a tight shrug.]

Yeah, well, they were until my feet decided that footie pajamas weren't in style, and decided to bust out the seams like a fat kid crossing the finish line to a picnic table full of blueberry pies. [This isn't true, of course; it's more a subtle dig as to how much fucking time has passed. He holds a foot up and gives it a little shake, as if to prove his point. Sure enough, it appears that Dave is one of those poor teenage boys who still has a few years to go before he fully grows into his huge feet] Shoe-shopping is a bitch, even with alchemizing.

[There's something even more tense in his shoulders when he puts his foot down. Talking is difficult.]

[plushcrush]

Not even godtier pjs come in Teen Sasquatch, huh? [It's weird. Bro's been watching Dave ever since he died, but somehow he'd never noticed how huge the kid's feet had gotten. Had he just never looked at the kid below the ankles until now or something? Dave could almost literally fill Bro's shoes now.

Weird. It's all weird. Dave is the most familiar thing in the world to Bro, and Bro's observed all the changes he's undergone, but seeing them in person is disconcerting in ways that don't even make sense. Like, he'd seen the kid growing taller; why is it only freaky now, standing in front of him? He's heard Dave's voice as recently as yesterday, so why does it only register now how much deeper it's gotten since the last time Dave talked to him directly?

Fucking ludicrous. He ought to have a handle on this, certainly a better handle than Dave. Dave hasn't seen Bro at all since he died, whereas Bro's been watching him all the time. He's got no reason to be surprised or confused, here.]

Still totally overselling the ironic commentary. Good to know some shit never changes. [He means this wholly unironically, even if it's couched in familiar get-on-my-level rhetoric. (Like he should be critiquing the kid's style right as they reunite, but fuck if Bro can help himself. It's the way they've always related to each other, and he doesn't have any other roadmap to this situation except to do what he's always done.) Dave's style has always been to beat the shit out of similes and metaphors, like the red-headed stepchildren of dead horses; Bro, for his part, prefers the quick, deft cuts of a surgeon. Somehow, it makes Bro think of their respective swords - that fat sword Dave's lugged around for most of the past three years, compared to his own kickass katana. Beating things to death or shredding them. Stylistic choices.

But it really is reassuring that Dave's style has barely changed at all, even if everything else has. Sure, the kid's polished off a lot of the rougher edges over the years, but it's still the exact same shape underneath. It's a genuine relief for something to be that close to how he left it.]

[chronologistics]

Pretty sure the scruffy little Chinese brats at the Godtier factory don't have anything other than "Oliver Twist" their size-rhetoric. Looks like we might have to lodge some customer complaints at the corporate head office. [Where is he even going with this.] Maybe if we bitch enough, they'll send us a $25 gift card to the Red Lobster and we can get our cheddar biscuit on.

[There's a part of him that almost expects to be received with a puppet lobbing at him from some insane and impossible direction, and so the tips of his fingers dig slightly into his arm. Of course, there isn't any puppet, and so he just settles for staring straight into Bro's shades because there really isn't anywhere else he wants to look.

Does dying leave scars? Does Bro even remember dying at all?

(The thought that time shenanigans could be at hand, and that Bro could be from before that whole fiasco had crossed his mind, but he's almost 100% certain that he would have been received a lot differently if that were the case. Likely, with a whole slew of shitty swords and maybe a couple cherry bombs.)]

Well some things gotta stay the same, I guess. Otherwise there's always gonna be one asshole who can't keep up, and everyone knows what happened to Old Yeller. [Yeah, probably shouldn't turn this into some sort of ironic hash-battle. There are times and places for that, and right now is neither of them.] Anyway, what is this shit with the crows. Like, I was hoping for lions, tigers, and bears, not more of these brainless feathery assholes.

[plushcrush]

[Yep, no smuppets. If Bro had his modus, it'd be packed with them, of course, and something as minor as the complete destruction of the Earth and his own three-year stint of death wouldn't put a crimp in his plush ambush routine. But his modus is who the fuck knows where, which is another strike against this crapsack place they're at.

He knows Dave is just casually bullshitting, but the reference to Old Yeller strikes a little uncomfortably close to home. That one asshole who can't keep up. Bro's been dead for three years, and his being near-totally informed of everything that happened in the interim no longer feels like the comfortably comprehensive grasp on things he thought he had. Not faced with Dave. Right now, he feels a lot closer to that asshole who can't keep up than the self-assured badass he used to be, or at least did a damn good job impersonating.

He figured that having watched Dave since he'd died meant he had the advantage, given that Dave hasn't seen him at all, but...well, Dave's the one who's changed. Whereas Bro hasn't really changed at all. At the very least, Bro's realizing they're a lot closer to equally off-balance than he'd thought; Dave might even be the one with the edge. At least Bro's pretty much exactly the same person as in his memories.]

Why're you askin' me? You're the one I thought was simpatico with these birdbrains. I know other you was styling the impaled look, but turns out it's not getting stabbed in the chest that imparts the avian Rosetta Stone.

[That should at least answer Dave's inner question as to whether Bro remembers.]