Chapter Text
Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you are pretty certain that you’re supposed to be calling the culling drones right now. You have just come across a CERTAIN ORNERY MUTANTBLOOD with SKINNED KNEES, and he is trying to hide farther back in the SKETCHY ALLEYWAY you found him in and also CUSSING YOU OUT. You’d like to tell him to CALM THE FUCK DOWN, but he is hearing none of it, and also that awful, tinny song from the commercials on the holoscreens is grinding through your ears. It’s basically the same six notes in the same shitty pattern, on repeat, and Bro had you mixing better by the time you started the first round of schoolfeeding. You don’t know what’s worse: the absolute banality, or the way the tune got ripped straight from that Jesus song, the one that would probably hit the heights of fthluthonic horror when sung by a chorus of children in a low-budget paranormal flick.
‘1-800-413/-CULL the mutants/save our genes.’
Actually, the worst is definitely how ‘genes’ and ‘three’ don’t really rhyme. They hadn’t even been trying, but that’s not the point right now.
More importantly, this self-important little fuckass is trying to bluster you into turning the other way and never, ever telling anyone about this, EVER, and not doing a very good job of it. He’s running through the entire catalogue: threats, promises, insults, pleas, and back to steadily more gruesome (but inventive, you’ll give him that) threats. It’s a clearance sale in the coercion department, all these bargain bins and ‘Must Go!’ racks lined up before you, just begging for you to dip into one or two or six, and oh fuck, he actually is begging now, okay, shit, that was not a good thing that happened with your lungs and stomach right there. This kid doesn’t beg, and oh thank god, he’s insulting your mother or something, good, but that crackle of desperation is still at the back of his throat and you shove your hands in your pockets. Three insults in is when that crackle splits his current word right down the middle, and now he’s yelling at you.
“JUST GO THE FUCK AWAY, YOU PUSTULANT SACK OF SHIT, GO THE FUCK AWAY OR CALL THE FUCKING NUMBER IF YOUR BLEACH-CORRODED PAN CAN MUSTER UP THE INTELLECTUAL FORTITUDE TO NOT SHIT ITSELF AND DO SOMETHING PROPERLY FOR ONCE IN ITS FUCKING LIFE-“
And wow, you are seriously not cool with this, not cool with this at all, and that shitty jingle won’t stop shitty running through your shitty head, and every plunked, predictable note is wailing for you to whip out your phone, dial the number, and report this panicky little bastard. He can’t even decide whether to abscond like fuck or take a swing at you; not like he could lose you, and not like you’d lose to him, either way.
But fuck that shit. You weren’t gonna call the drones anyway. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you never were.
==>REWIND
Okay, your name is Dave Strider, and you are backing the fuck up, all the way back to how this shit started. It is four months ago, 4:25 PM. You are twenty, have a day off, and so are sitting on the couch eating breakfast as your Bro heads out to work. His weird puppet shit is still everywhere, but whatever, he’s been doing that for as long as you can remember. Besides, his job is all top-secrets and robots on the military base a few stops down; dude needs a hobby. You don’t judge.
Most other nights, you’d be heading out with him, running on the troll-times that keep the base ticking. Or maybe it’d be you going solo on one of his nights off, but that almost never happens. Big top-secret robot shit is too important for breaks. You work on the same base - he got you your job -, but your gig’s a little more casual, a little easier to get downtime on, and you’re the fucking best at it, hands down. You’re a courier par excellence, as is only to be expected of the freerunning godking of the New Troll-Houston skyline. Nothing fancy about it; it’s just the easiest way to get around in this toybox mess of a city.
Except for the flips. The flips are for you, because parkour is fine and all, but it’s just a little too clean for a guy as hellaciously cool as you. Also, the tricks look way better on camera.
You finish breakfast and put your dishes in the sink, head back to your room to finish editing the video from last week. It’s almost done, just needs a few color tweaks here and there, and the sound definitely needs work. For a starting point, the track’s fine, but it doesn’t rise where you want it to, has no suspense at key points, and the sync is just slightly off. You put your headphones on and plug in your synthesizer. The camera gets pushed from its spot next to the keyboard to the other side of the table, teetering until you realize what an absolutely terrible idea that is. You move it to your bed before settling in front of your husktop and opening the video folder.
You have to scroll past the older videos to get to your newest works-in-progress, since you haven’t switched the setting to ‘Display Most Recent’ yet. You open the file at the very bottom, shrink the window and drag it to the side, open the latest version of Forge, pirated. The mix is waiting in the sidebar, most recent on top. You fiddle with the volume, give it a listen before taking another look at what you have for the video.
The shots are clean. They’d better be; you’ve been teaching yourself since you were twelve and had just started getting into parkour after clicking a couple vids in a forum. Parkour had led you to freerunning, freerunning to tricking, and all three to hanging out after school with a bunch of similarly dumb reckless kids. When you’d all started getting better and fucking up your backflips less, some of you had started recording. The shots are clean, if pretty static, and the moves are slick, so all’s good on that front. The music just needs to set them up properly, show them off. You switch windows.
After a few preliminary edits, you pull the new track over to the video, let it run. No good. Intro’s better, but the beat’s off, doesn’t match with the aerial. It’s fine with the cheat after, though. Now you need it to slide with the vault, then lift, and shit, that’s not going to work. Back to the Forge.
You do every video yourself, start to finish: planning, performing, post-production, posting. Makes filming a real jazz, but you don’t complain, and neither does your audience. What’s there to complain about? You are a self-sustaining entertainment mogul, a veritable flash blizzard of stuck-to-the-screen entrapment, by which you mean that you have a moderately successful GrubTube account (turntech) and a webcomic you closed down a few years ago. You tell people you just grew out of it, like you grew out of ‘godhead.’
Like a lot of the kids grew out of jumping off walls and out of buildings. Some of them just ended up moving away, and you chat with them whenever you can, and with some other trickers off-planet who found you through forums and GrubTube. Most of them cut your handle down to ‘Tech,’ and that’s fine. Sometimes, they talk really earnestly about meeting someday, somehow, but interstellar travel is still pricey as hell for civilians. It’s cute to think about, but sometimes you just ‘x’ out of the window and go back to work.
Speaking of which, you close the chat application completely. This is no time to be distracted; the local company you did a motion-capture for a few months ago hinted that maybe their sister company had similar job in the works, but bigger audience, bigger pay-off. Your most recent project is your newest demo reel, and while you might be the best in New Houston, there’s a shit-ton of other competition out there.
They probably have other people to hold their cameras, too. One of these days, you should probably find some other nerd to team up with, someone who can frame a shot and hold the damn thing steady, but the last attempt didn’t work out so well, and you’re sort of not looking forward to another dent in your machines. Even if they still work afterward.
You only get up for lunch and are back on the computer stool fifteen minutes later, rubbing your eyes and trying to work the knots out of your neck and shoulders. The programs are just as you left them on your computer, but you pull up the video folder anyway and waste exactly twenty-three extra minutes rewatching old clips before getting back to work.
You stop half an hour before 1:00 AM, close your web browser, then save what progress you’d made. The chat application stays on, even if you close all the windows. You pick up your shades and put them on, tap them into place before grabbing a drink and a snack, head out to the park. You get there six minutes ahead of schedule, start doing slow, ambling circuits around the lampposts. This is sort of like the time four years ago when you’d completely forgotten it was your birthday or wriggling day, whatever anyone wanted to call it. You were early then, too, with no one else around, just minding your own business when suddenly a bunch of assholes dropped down or sprang out of nowhere to tackle you or pound on your back, yelling the words to ‘Happy Birthday’ in Human and Alternian.
Now it’s 1:17 AM, perfect time, perfect night, not your birthday, and you don’t know where those assholes are now. You’ve been waiting for seventeen minutes exactly, and if the trend of the past month and a half holds up, you will soon be waiting twenty-five for exactly no one. Whatever. You updated the post on the New Houston board of the forum, and pestered the fuck out of the ones who, you’re mostly certain, hadn’t moved or gotten culled perigees ago; if they want you, they can damn well come find you.
Which would be pretty easy, as you show up same time, same spot, three days a week. 1:00 AM, Serendipity Park, low wall on the west side approaching from Oak Street Station. You describe it as the one with all the dead trees, but there are two other stations within about the same walking distance. Those get a footnote on the main post.
Twenty-four minutes in, you’re almost done warming up, have started a course of one-legged squats along the wall for the hell of it. When you stand at the end to turn and finish it off, there’s a kid jogging towards you, all in darks, has to be a troll with that skin. There hadn’t been any response on the board, though, so he’s probably just passing through. You keep going, and wait for him to jog past.
But nope, he stops a short jump from the wall as you straighten up, halfway to the end. You glance down at him and get off the wall, land silently, transferring the impact, cushioning your joints.
“Hey,” he says, and you manage to keep from telling him to lay off the smokes. He’s got a sigil in gray across his chest, eyes probably sore behind those really fucking stupid goggles he’s got, irradiated red and yellow even in this light. You’ve never seen him before. You look him up (not really) and down (no comment).
“Sup.”
“Are you Dave Strider?”
Straight to the point and a total miss. “Nah, I’m his ridiculously handsome and equally talented twin brother.”
He scoffs, chin coming up and arms folding over the lower half of his sigil. “Real original, turntechbulgemunch. The question was just a formality, in case you were wondering.” You weren’t. “I’ve been following your channel for sweeps.”
Fuck, you’re going to lose this one, but you can’t stop yourself; the shot is too easy and he’s just a little too earnest about it. “Whoa shit, we’ve got a fanboy over here, stop, please, I’m blushing. Any other embarrassing secrets you wanna spill about touching yourself to my flawlessly chiseled body or what? Go on, it’s okay to share.”
He mostly looks annoyed, so this should be good. “Oh. My. God. Do you always follow your introductions with painfully desperate solicitations, or am I just that fucking special?”
You tip your shades down, give him the patented Strider Stare. He just gawps back for a second, eyebrows drawing down, but then he flinches, tries to hide it. You’re used to it, flick the sunglasses back over your freak eyes. “Getting shy on me, are you?”
He doesn’t apologize; you give him a point for that. “Wow, yes, you caught me, congratulations! I get my kicks lathering up and polishing my bulge for hours after spooling up amateur freerunning videos! It’s the one high point of my otherwise miserable, gangrenous dribble of a life from the puckered rectum of existence, would you like to join?”
He just rolls his eyes at your sudden laugh, his entire head moving with it, but you barely keep a hand from shooting up to cover your mouth. They go into your pockets, and you smile for a little too long. Oh well. Play it off, Strider.
“Oh sweetie, tell me more.”
This fucker talks too fast, and you let him go. “Fuck that! You’ve clearly reached unheard-of levels of mastery in the skillset ‘Getting Myself Off to the Sound of My Own Voice.’ I’ve got nothing else to contribute, in the humbling face of such quake-worthy prowess. Behold, you asshole! I am shaking in my standard-issue ambulatory devices.”
You drop the smarm, quirk an eyebrow instead. “Feet?”
You get the finger and he gets another grin. Guy’s got bark in sp- whoops, sometimes you forget trolls have this weird thing about card suites. Doesn’t matter. Guy’s got bark. You hope to hell he’s got bite.
Up close, he clocks in at about five-seven, stumpy horns and blunt everything, nose, jaw, teeth, hands. Sorta stocky, muscles like he got them from holding other kids upside down in load gapers. Talks like maybe he was the one trying to keep from getting held upside down instead, but whatever. So strength, probably check. Coordination? Possible. Possibly negligible. Probably going to lose him in a month, god damn it, if he even sticks around that long. But he hasn’t walked off yet, so that’s a start.
“Hope you’re all warmed up from jogging over, because this jam session starts exactly now.”
“Aren’t we waiting for everyone else?” He takes his phone out to check the time, and your lips tighten.
“According to recent attendance rates, no. Now get your head in the game, new guy. Show me what you got.”
For one long moment, he lifts his head and just looks at you, and something in the set of his mouth reads disbelief. Then he squares his shoulders and says, “Hold this,” before tossing you his phone. You slide it into your pocket and watch him jog away, stop, size up the area. You watch him, and you are waiting for him to flub, to stutter-step and hit the wall, to flail his way through a vault or only be adequate. At best.
He scuffs his feet and shakes out his arms, and you want to tell him that these are completely unnecessary psych-out gestures, before he runs at the low wall and shows. He more than shows- he blazes.
You watch him streak over the concrete all momentum and air, hands barely pressing the surface. He touches down, takes three steps and goes airborne again, double-legs, bent at the waist with feet fully extended and sweeping around like counting the milliseconds on a clock. As soon as he lands, he launches, corkscrew to cross, and he doesn’t stop fucking moving. He blurs a little when he slips out of the range of the lights, but you don’t take off your sunglasses.
On a 1040, he spins too fast, can’t get his feet under him in time, and lands knee-thigh-ass, is up and going for it again in the same breath. You want to tell him to calm the fuck down, to reset and try again, but that would mean he’d stop moving.
So you watch him and keep your mouth shut. He gets it the second time, but it’s not as clean as it could be, he doesn’t tuck his legs right when he should, which probably led to the flub earlier, but fuck it, guy’s got guts.
He’s up on the wall again and running, easy as if he had a foot to spare on either side, and you follow him, bemused. He’s made his point, he’s pretty okay, what the hell does he think he’s doing now, heading towards that jumbled unfinished mess of construction, a horrible eldritch tangle of pipes and broken half-walls? You get a better vantage point and-
Oh shit. His tricks are okay, but here, navigating the city’s afterthought, here is where he shines. He speed-vaults the first pipe, chest-high, ducks under the second, weaves his way through the rest like a sun-streak across mirrors, hardly touching, untouchable. The last two pipes go one over the other, give him a foot and a half of space, and he gets his hands on the top one, slips through and keeps going, heading for the high walls and picking up speed.
You don’t know what you’re going to do if he fucks up. Not because of personal investment in whatever he’s doing, whoever he is. It’s just been a really long time since you’ve seen anyone else get to the top of those walls, and well, if he does, good for him. Better for you. They’re fourteen feet easy, the sides of that disjointed corner, and he veers out to come at the farthest in an arc instead of straight on. He’d better get this.
The first few steps go like the wall’s an extension of flat ground, and the next few rely on the speed he had coming in. He reaches with the same manic intensity he did everything else, one hand swinging up and gripping first, other latching on as he kicks and pulls up, getting his feet up into a cat hang.
He’s steady there, may as well have been drawn in the abandoned blueprints as the world’s worst-placed gargoyle. Then he shifts and pushes off again, twists in the corner of what would have been a room, sticks to the adjacent wall. You catch a flash of his goggles as he glances over his shoulder - at you, at the ground, you can’t tell -, then jumps. He turns in the half-second after his feet leave the wall, upper body first, motion sliding from shoulders to hips to knees in the follow-through. The balls of his feet hit first, and he compresses and goes forward, one arm touching ground hand-first as he rolls, spreading the hit over his shoulder and across his entire frame before letting it send him back to his feet.
Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit, oh shit, this kid is good. And when he rises up out of the roll, tilts his head back to look at you, that fucker, you’re going to punch him, you’re going to smear his face across the dirt: he’s good and he knows it.
Except you’re not going to punch him. You don’t know why you want to, but you’re not going to punch him. You’re not going to take him by the shoulders and shake him until his nubby little teeth clatter up to his nubby little horns. You’re not even going to make fun of his godawful goggles with the red-orange lenses, which are hideous and tacky and you grudgingly approve.
Instead, you flash a grin with too many teeth as he takes a few steps towards you then stops. You measure up his stance, the way he has his feet planted and head cocked like you owe him something. Like however you manage to pay, it’s still going to be wanting. Fuck this new guy. He’s got a fucking horrible laugh, too, all hoarse and broken like it got rattled hard against every single one of his ribs on the way up.
“C’mon, Strider! You think you got something worth seeing?”
WHO
IS
THIS
DOUCHEBAG?