savetheearth | 5 / audio

A bunch of suicidal numbskulls went traipsing into some mine. Don't ask me how that worked out because I wasn't there.

What's with the echo?

Oh that actually went down?

[Alex might have been one of those numbskulls if he hadn't decided, before getting sent out of town, that sneaking out to go was too risky.]

It was part of one of those vision things/pulses/whatever. Other-me doesn't have a mouth so I figure he wasn't used to making sounds to talk. No I don't hear that I'm doing it unless I concentrate, and no I can't make it stop. Unless I leave Locke City apparently.

I guess. I've just been over here rolling my eyes.

Wow, sucks to be you.

What would you have - missed...?

[He thinks he catches the implication of that - and given that it was unwarned is left a bit unsettled by it.]

Parents aren't really helpful when they should be, I guess.

Uh... There was a party at Cinderella's house... and we explored the mine again.

That's a good question, actually. I haven't heard anything in the news about aliens or chupacabras despite those hairy guys just being all over the damn place.

You tried to tell them about the network?

Oh great, you people who get on the network just to tell everyone else how lame we are are my favorite.

[Alex has the good grace to sound sheepish about having tried to talk around what happened.]

They sent me away, way, this last week, to this, like, juvie, vee, lite disguised as a camp. Because of the repeating-ing thing, mostly, but they know something's been up with me.

But, of course, I forgot everything-ing, and all my, um. Ex, extra special presents from the pulses went away. So I got a leck, lecture about wasting-ing everyone's time, and the camp sent me home.

I wish I could tell them the truth, but they'd never believe, leeve, me, and I can't prove it.

Did you guys, guy-zuh, find anything new in the mines?

Yeah thats a good point and I hadn't actually thought of that. I just figured the bad cops were covering it up.

I know they wouldn't be able to see the network but they can totally hear my repeating thing.

Well, they care. Even if they show it in ways you might not understand at the time.

There were some monsters and a weird buzzing noise. Otherwise, not much.

...A lot of people got echo-pulse-things too.

I don't really have a whole lot else to do on here.

Well that's not, like, magic or monsters. That's just you talking funny.

No, I know they'd never buy that. But the repeating-ing thing stops if I get out of Locke City.

Which mean-zuh people got sort of pissed at me when they were supposed to be treating-ing me for a condition I didn't have anymore.

Well you're better than that one chick who would outright tell people they were stupid, at least.

Yeah, that sounds hells of unproductive.

So what do you think your parents would do if you showed them your apparent tail?

that sucks dude. i'm sorry.

Pretty sure they would have, yeah.

Went out beyond the boundaries of Fantasia, did you?

Flip their shit for starters!

And then they'd probably drag me to a million doctors and/or shrinks and that would be bad because I bet anything it'd bring me, but more importantly them, to the attention of the bad guys.

Yeah, I know they care and stuff. But I can't do anything-ing to make them stop worrying about this.

[Cue all the embarrassment of a teenage boy admitting even that much about Feelings and Difficulties.]

So, like, the mines, mine-zuh, give pulses the way the statues, choo-zuh, did, right? Which proves, maybe, that's it the rocks, not something-ing a sculptor did?

[By halfway through it, in that tone, Anthony feels something in his brain wrench over having pried. It comes secondary to sympathetic anxiety.

His next breath out is dry and compressed - with the very slightest trace of voice to make it a groan. It's a brief sound.]

-- But you were doing that since June -- at least. ... -- The repeating -- ! Why would they think -- you'd be faking - that...?

[Not only anxiety but a thin, tense under-layer of exasperation, both secondhand and at the fact that this is just the sort of scenario he's had the mixed luck of not having to face. He has little to say with confidence or from closer-to-level ground...]

Yeah OK.

[He's less annoyed than resigned (and a little amused).]

It would be an interesting experiment but I'm not going to be the one to try it. I wonder if there's something less obvious someone could try.

Yeah, well.

[He shrugs, then remembers it's not visible.]

Not much I can do about, bout, it. Are you doing okay, kay?

Not on purr, purpose, but yeah. One of those fakey, kee, camps for problem kid-zuh.

...Problem kids? The hell did you do?

The beginning-ing of June.

[He remembers perfectly well; it was the first weird vision thing he actually knew as such when it happened.]

But the water was, like, the straw that broke, oke, the camel's back. Between the hiss, hysterical laughing and one of the pulses, sez, hitting me all over again, it was really obvious I was messed up.

Had really bad timing-ing drinking the water. And 'I just have the giggles,' gigg-ull-zuh, didn't cut it as an explanation, shun, but I didn't have anything better.

So they thought you were huffing whatever? Oh man, that blows.

Yeah, and that it was all part of the ack, acting-out thing that started with the repeating-ing.

If I was gonna rebel, bell, man, I would come up with something cooler than this.

Which one hit again - ? [This one distinctly more lowly- and quickly-muttered - it's apparent enough from the initial message that it at the least Alex's tail wasn't forced out, or so he's assuming, but if it still made it obvious something was unusual - ] -- Only a vision...?

Seriously. No offence but a stutter? Not a way to look cool. Quite the opposite.

And of course that went away while you were out too, so I'm sure they think even more you're just full of it.

The one where I-- [He huffs a sigh.]

Not knowing-ing how to refer to other-me is getting really, lee, old.

[He gives up and goes with the way that's felt the most natural for some time.]

The one where I remembered my brother. It was like fee, feeling it all over again for the first time.

That's totally, lee, my point, dude. I mean, like, going stare, stereotypical and getting something-ing pierced would be cooler than this!

But yeah, completely normal once I got out of Locke City, tee. Didn't even know what they were talking-ing about when they said I'd been acting out.

I -- see. [Voice is dry - in quality, not attitude.

And it hits him, strangely, that there's a subject the discussion of which Alex would have missed.]

-- You haven't - learned any names, yet -- then.

Well, at least that's a normal thing. No one admits that they've been acting out even when they are doing it intentionally.

Maybe you should tell your parents it's a psychological thing in responce to stress at home because they don't trust you.

[Alex thinks about this, trying to remember everything he's heard other-Alex say.]

No. Not yet. He called his brother his prinn, prince, not his name. Are other people getting-ing names?

Yeah -- uhhm. [Voice came out sounding a little silly there - pull it down and hook onto stability...] -- Some... yes.. -- Bakura - asked about it, actually. Some of us are seeing as people who have the same names as us -- ...some aren't. I don't know what the difference could mean -- if it does tell us anything...

[As a note.] I had another vision then -- in fact. [Even if it hadn't been brought on by the thought of names.] The - messenger's name is also Anthony.

I think I managed to convince, vinn-suh, them I really didn't remember doing-ing any of it, and that's why they sent me back so soon.

Now I get to see a shrink on top of the spee, speech therapist.

[He gives a short bark of a laugh at the idea.]

That's tare, terrible. And brilliant.

There's a shrink on here, you know~

He's kinda a jerk and nosey but at least he'll know that it's all just numbers BS and fake it for you.

Huh.

Sum, somehow, I don't think other-me is named Alex. [He manages a laugh, as if to make sure it's obvious that's a joke.]

It does make you wonder, wonn-der, if, like.

[He has to think about how to phrase this, since it's only just occurring to him, and hasn't come clear in his own mind yet.]

If our other versions, shun-zuh, have any influence on the us we are-- I mean, on us now. Or if it might be vy, vice versa.

Yeah, but I can't ex, exactly show up with a preference, renn-suh, for a shrink out of nowhere. They'll know something-ing's up with that.

Could say the school recommends him? Since he does testing a shit for them. Or he could do the contacting first and claim the school sent him.

[[Because of course Bakura has no trouble putting Mort on the spot to prove that he has good intentions. None at all~]]

[A quick-breath dry "heh..." laugh in kind, with heart to it - joke indeed detected - though his attitude neutralizes again when Alex continues.

When he finishes that statement a figurative lightbulb's set off, however - exactly a thing he's been inarticulately wondering himself for a while!]

-- Like we might have been -- "made" - to become them -- somehow -- ... -- or they - reflect - something... we already have... -- Is it like that - that you meant it...?

[Alex thinks this over.]

That could work! If it's okay, kay, with him and all.

I'm sure it will be. He's always saying how he wants to help, after all~

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I meant, menn-tuh.

[Insofar as he meant anything so concrete, but Anthony's question helps him start to see what it is he was going for.]

Like, if the past lives thee, theory has anything-ing to it, we might still have some of their tray, traits in this life. Or maybe they're who we might have been in a totally different dimension, shun.

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