[DATABURST] In-Character Inbox

[senseloss]

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$ladyamalthea

[skjoldpike]

hey
connor and i were just talking about checking out the hospital
wanna come with us 🙃

[ Victor's obviously going to be tagging along too. ]

[senseloss]

On some level, I'm flattered you thought of me.

Also, yes. Should I bring anything?

$mephistopheles

[pompoused]

no wonder the sky is gray, all the color is in your eyes.

[ nevermind he has no idea who he is sending this text to, nor what color their eyes are. ]

$senseloss

[senseloss]

Wrong number, I think?

[Nevermind that they're not dealing with phones and this is a username, not a number.]

ACTION

[karmacomecalling]

[The first floor of Quibit house may never have been sleepy (there's a Cybertronian and a talking baby bat on the roster), but there's a new tenant with certain...eccentricities. Sure he keeps things noiseless between ten and six, but any other hour all bets are off.

The ruckus isn't even limited to his own suite.

Coda might be fixing something in the kitchen one evening, or perhaps they're reading at the table. Either way they're present for the sudden ding! of the toaster.

sccchOOOP!

Out pops one Warner Brother, arms splayed like he's expecting applause.]

Helloooooooooooooo Coda!!

[senseloss]

[Coda is, in fact, with their laptop at the room's desk, but the sight of the Warner brings a wry little smile to their face. They're familiar with a trick some of their kind can do with mirrors, to similar effect. It's fairytale logic, that.]

What if I hadn't been dressed when you popped in? You would have gotten more of an eyeful than I'm sure you want.

[But they close the laptop and walk over to the toaster anyway.]

Or worse, you could have run into my roommate, who's relatively normal and sane and reasonable.

[ delivery ] - during the cleanup efforts

[placeheld]

[ A few days after the giants retreat, along with the food delivery Coda will find a gift to the right of their door. It's a neon terrarium, about eight inches across and twelve high, enclosing an impossibly tiny bonsai tree with a single full-sized bloom at the top.

Taped to the top is an envelope with a name written in iridescent ink. ]

Coda -

Did you know you can bring things from home with those little tokens? I found out today. This is Yuki, from my garden at home - she's fourteen years old or something like that. One of the first things I grew on my own. She likes colder weather than most flowers. As long as you don't freeze the terrarium solid she'll be just fine. It'll take care of pruning and feeding itself.

I wanted to remind you that sometimes things are good, even if they're not where they're supposed to be, or growing the way they were meant to, if you're careful with them. Even if they should have died out a long time ago.

I also wanted to apologize.

Not about finding you in the maze - though I am sorry we were separated - but for upsetting you, the first time. And the second time for not respecting that you didn't want to talk to me. I guess I'm doing that again, but I can't stand to leave things on those terms. After this, this is the last you'll hear of me unless $doubleneon shoves us together, I promise, if that's what you want.

-Artemis

[Response, via text.]

[senseloss]

And what if this being the last I hear of you isn't what I want?

@1ofakind | text, photo | early April, around 4am

[placeheld]

[attachment: photo of the outside of Qubit house, with Coda's window lit up and, to oversell it, messily circled in red. ]

not even asking why you're up. Let me in?

[senseloss]

You're up too, don't judge.

Are you coming in the window or coming around to the door?

[They live on the first floor, this is entirely a valid question.]

Text after the ball at some point

[breakaleginhalf]

So uh. This won't affect you as a Changeling but it'll affect you as a friend, so like.

Artemis saw a memory from my Durance, a bad one. So I wanna give him the Oath to help him understand some shit from it

[senseloss]

Oh.

I suppose that makes sense. You trust him like that?

[soulbonder]

Strange coincidence.

The simulation is filled with duplicates not even a day after our conversation.

[senseloss]

Yes. There are at least two duplicates of myself here. It's not very comfortable to know about them, if I'm honest.

Mid-week 2 of the doppelevent

[breakaleginhalf]

[Well, that had been an abject disaster.

Gil's not normally suicidal, he'd swear up and down, but this entire place was one massive existential crisis. He can't imagine how the other version of him is handling this well enough that he's been here for a month making friends.

But. He owes one of them an apology for that entire display. He just. Has no idea where to find them.

Which is why it's largely coincidence that he happens to walk into the library one of these days and spot a familiar shock of white hair: and immediately a rapid rush of fear besets him. Would they even want to talk to him, see him after that? Does he even have the right??

It takes him a moment to realise he's already started walking over to them, and pauses just a little too far to be in Coda's personal space.

Well, here he goes.]

Um. Hey... Coda.

[senseloss]

Gil Ryanson.

[The static in their voice is thicker, and they don't bother to glance up at him. The window behind them, already feathered over lightly with frost, grows moreso, until it's impossible to look out of.]

You came back. Respawned, as I had told you you would.

(forward-dated to the 12th so I don't forget)

[mandelbrotz]

(The following Wednesday after Amanda's verbal slip-up, a small strawberry cake is left for Coda. It's poorly iced in "funfetti" icing. There's a letter, in small block handwriting:)

CODA,
I'm sorry. I don't know how to talk to people, apparently, and even less about talking to someone with the kind of trauma you had. I'm desperately trying to reach out and touch someone, and you and the others made me feel like I wasn't alone. But the gravity of your situation is much worse, I understand that now. (To say "I can't imagine that" would be dumb, right? Because if I couldn't, then how could I realize what I said was so wrong?)

I would like to be your friend, and I can promise if you accept me, I won't speak of your situation unless you bring it up. And even then, I'll listen rather than try to sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Because I don't. I'd like to understand, but I can also handle talking about music and how terrible of an icing job I did on the cake. Haha?

hopefully,
Amanda Brotzman

why text when you can just astral project your thoughts

[soulbonder]

((Coda, there's a certain matter I've learned recently that I wish to discuss with you. Could we meet each other in person sometime soon?))

[senseloss]

Surprise is the first emotion to bubble up, then concern, and then anxiety. There is nothing worse than 'can we talk' to stir the inky dark emotions in someone's heart.

((Of course, when is convenient for you?))

Action, at Trojan, after hours

[push_that_pesticide]

[ Bugsy had two bowls of stew in hand, whistling to himself as he stuck his head into the various rooms that Coda usually haunted. ]

Codaaaa- added some new shit to the everybody soup, want your opinion on it-

[ A very, very flimsy excuse to make sure they ate tonight. ]

[senseloss]

[Coda's sprawled out on a bed--not their bed, but a bed--staring at the ceiling when Bugsy finds them. It's cold in this space, proper Winter cold, and they don't bother to sit up when they hear the bug calling.]

I'll grab some later, maybe. I just ate breakfast, I'm pretty sure.

[Either that or they're struggling with time, nbd.]

delivery @ trojan

[lostintransmition]

[Many things have been showing up for a while now. Mono's new additions, and for him, a sort of repayment. A thanks, a rent, for keeping him around.

The latest of this is a little stone perched on the arm rest of the Coda couch; a piece of gravel, with a particularly polished flat side, shiny and pointed at one end. An opaque, white, quartz-like thing with striations of yellow-orange and tints of pink.]

[senseloss]

[Coda totally wire-wraps that sucker and wears it as a necklace on a piece of string.]

un: $$$MEATSLACKS$$$

[karmacomecalling]

do you ever wonder if cows know how much methane they're making

[senseloss]

Not particularly. Is that a way of saying 'hi, I want to talk', or does that question actually bother you?

action, trojan, after Yakko's disappearance

[lostintransmition]

[It takes everything he has to not overload the screen and shatter it.

The TV spits him out smack in the middle of Trojan because he hadn't bothered to actually think, he just wanted to get here, he just has to find someone who can tell him what's happening.

He's been searching all day. He doesn't remember how he found out. He just did, and then Yakko's name wasn't on the Qubit House roster anymore, and when Mono went to check his apartment (which was thankfully vacant at the time), he was relieved to see that there wasn't an empty pair of slacks slumped in front of the TV screen. And he checked a thousand more throughout Svelte. As many as he could. No sign of him, nothing at all, it's like he just... vanished.

And Mono knows vanishing people: in the shape of kids who were too slow or too clumsy, in kids who didn't trust him enough, in the piles of clothes gathered at the edges of streets and in front of vacant white screens. There's something cold and dense and slimy and bitter that sits in his stomach, in his throat, between his teeth. He hasn't once eaten in the many hours he's spent looking.

Mono jumps to his feet. In a moment, he spots a familiar pale-white figure against the neon furniturescape, and he wastes no time in sprinting across countertops and tables, making every use of the subtle path built throughout the place.

And then he's standing there. And he just. Stands there. Stiffly, mutely. Moths and cockroaches stuff his throat full, choking him out. How does he--how does he...]

I think-- [Swallows.] I... I... someone's gone.

[senseloss]

[Coda immediately gestures him closer, moving their laptop off their thighs and onto the nearby table--offering that space to Mono if he wants it, still warm from the machine. Which he might not, that's getting close and who knows if the kid's interested in that.

...the offer stands.]

That seems to happen here, pretty often. Who?

delivery

[lostintransmition]

[Appearing next to Coda’s laptop is a little electric tea candle. In typical Svelte fashion, the light is a neon blue rather than yellow, and glitter swirls in the bulb of the fake flame.]

[senseloss]

[Coda places the candle inside the terrarium on their desk, where the blue light hits the white flowers of the bonsai tree and make them seem to glow.]

text; $cosmedic - backdated to early/mid July;

[redcosmedic]

If that port of yours is still giving you trouble, I may have stumbled across a bit of coding that could work for it.

[senseloss]

Intermittently. What will implementation of this code cost me, Doctor?

Action, at Trojan warehouse, August

[push_that_pesticide]

Not a lot about this place made sense to the young Scott Burnes. It seemed like some kinda department store for furniture, but one that people seemed to be squatting in- including... himself, considering he'd woken up in a bed there, surrounded by drawings that seemed vaguely familiar. So he'd gone exploring, trying to poke around here and there. One of the rooms had a large turntable in it, and a crate full of records that he'd started poking through. Some of the names he even recognized, vaguely, from hanging around the record store in Reno. He was a little distracted, probably wouldn't notice someone sneaking up on him.

[senseloss]

The room also has a lofted bed over a desk with a terrarium (containing a blooming bonsai tree), and a ceiling covered in glow in the dark stars. It's a cute set-up, a little oasis in the chaotic colors and wild maze of the Trojan Housewares.

Oh, and it has a teenager, gangly and dark-haired, grey eyes behind big round glasses. Walking up behind him and clearing (her?) their throat quietly.

"Uh, hey."