Fourteen ★ Video

[wasthemaster]

[The feed will click on, but it's mostly showing a brick wall of an alleyway at the moment. It's moving pretty erratically like Draco's trying to fix something and he's working with his hands. Granted, it's not like he actually knows how to make things work and he has no idea how to use muggle tools, so it's mostly just a lot of banging around until he finally caves to address the city at large.]

Now that that's over...[That is to say, if you want to talk to him about what happened with Thiazi and the corrupted, don't. He's not up for it at the moment save for a few close people.] I might actually need help with something. Only if you understand methods of mechanics.

[Give him a moment to flip the camera to reveal a motorcycle that a friend left to him. Said-motorcycle looks as though someone took a baseball bat to it. It's dented, one of the mirrors is missing and the front wheel is removed from the bike all together, propped up to the side somewhere.] How the hell do I put this back together?

Additionally...[And then he stops. Nah, he's not going to bother mentioning anything about the shop, or about people from home, or anything that's happened in the last few weeks. He's going to stay off of the radar as much as possible in terms of those topics.] Well, never mind. That's it. [And with another bang as he fruitlessly tries to hammer out the dents, the bracelet clicks off. Draco seems to have a talent for ignoring anything he wants to.]

Comments

[wasthemaster]

So who failed their job?

[alternia_strength]

His never present lusus primarily. Karkat erred as well, though very few of us realized the danger. He'd self medicated himself with sopor until his think pan was little more than mush. We didn't realize that his rage had never subsided. It may have been the only thing that survived chemical degradation of the think pan.

[wasthemaster]

Surprised he's still alive then.

[alternia_strength]

That may be attributed to a combination of his raw power, what cunning remained behind and the potency of his wrath. It's hard to say. I know only that he was... dangerous when we met.

[wasthemaster]

But surely there's someone more powerful than him, isn't there?

[alternia_strength]

Amongst those available at the time, there was not, or rather it was debatable, and those who may have been were unavailable.

[wasthemaster]

Where were they then?

[alternia_strength]

One had detonated the metallic chassie I had fashioned for her and would not return until after it was not possible to stop the Highblood. Two of the others were too busy trying to kill each other and plot about each other, and the one who the Sea-Dweller killed who survived ended up addressing his folly.

It was... basically a no-win scenario.

[wasthemaster]

...what the hell is the point of you bothering to try and play the game together if all you're doing is killing each other?

[alternia_strength]

An excellent question. I would answer the subject, but I'm dead. Aradia might be able to answer you if she arrives.

[wasthemaster]

Isn't she dead again, too?

[alternia_strength]

She died again, or rather lost connection to the robot I crafted for her to live in, but came back into existence. She... appears to have many selves, and several have died over the cosmos, but more than this I can't clearly state.

Honestly, she's confusing on the best of days.

[wasthemaster]

--is she part-cat? Or just incredibly lucky?

[alternia_strength]

She was a time-manipulator and... well, life and death were exceedingly difficult to properly track within the game, not to mention something called dream bubbles and different realities...

I will be frank. I stopped paying attention after a while.

[wasthemaster]

I can't exactly blame you. Someone tried to explain dream bubbles to me once...I stopped listening after a while, too.

Needless to say I don't envy you in the slightest. Just be glad it's irrelevant here.

[alternia_strength]

I think of them as floating fragments of a broken world, in which it is possible for even the dead to continue to subsist somehow. Regardless, as you said, it really does not impact this place directly.