deernet | [ACCIDENTAL VIDEO] UN: Hadron

Entry tags:

[ACCIDENTAL VIDEO] UN: Hadron

[CW: wide-scale destruction, arguably domestic terrorism, but no people are shown being hurt]

[At first one might be forgiven for thinking someone has started broadcasting a vintage sci-fi film. It's not in black and white but it feels like it should be. People run, panicked, through the streets of a small town. Smoke billows from multiple flaming buildings. Rubble litters the ground, signs have been pulled up and bent like pipe cleaners, and above it all wheels a great winged shape that occasionally belches more flames from a maw brimming with fangs.

It's a pterodactyl. Its eyes are glowing red and big as car tires, its back is lined with spikes, and if you look close enough you can see the seams on its neck where the metal plating fits together to allow it a truly terrifying range of motion. It's a mechanical marvel and it's the best indicator that this isn't a vintage movie, because it is at once both too sleek and moving in a way that is too lifelike to be an old animatronic or stop motion monster. It is very, very real. It swoops in low and snatches up a car in its clawed feet, spiraling upward again before launching it through the window of a laundromat.

Fiddleford watches all this from the roof of an adjacent building, one that is notably not on fire. He seems remarkably unbothered by all the destruction going on and is making no move to run in the opposite direction. He also looks like complete shit, but what else is new? His hair is messy, he looks like he hasn't shaved in days, there are dark circles under his eyes. That's standard Fiddleford. What's a little nonstandard is the almost-manic expression on his face and the box he's holding in his hands. It looks like what you'd use to control a model airplane, only chunkier and obviously home-made. It's covered in switches and dials and blinking lights and buttons. He flips one of them and the Homicidal Pterodactyltron lets out an ear-splitting scream that sounds like metal tearing. He wheels it around again, turns on the flames, and draws a scorched line up the street behind a few stragglers who are still scrambling to get out of this part of town.

The memory flickers. The fire was red a second ago and now it's blue and then the whole thing sort of stutters like a skipping VHS tape and then it's over and there's Fiddleford, looking just about as shit now as he did then, only a lot less feral and a lot more sheepish.]

... I swear on my life there's a proper explanation for this. It just, ah, it looks real bad without context.

[Which... you know, that's true. But it's also very 'cool motive, still wanton destruction' and he knows that, deep down, which is the problem.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dude.

[Fiddleford's brain, as it often does when he is capital-S Stressed makes a lot of leaps very fast all at once to completely the wrong conclusion.]

I wasn't aiming for your uncle.

[For once this wasn't about Ford. If he'd wanted to level Ford's cabin he would have just gone and done it.]

Yyyyeeeaaaaaah, I kind of. Know.

[Oh, that's right. This kid knows more about him than he does when it comes to some things, and that's still something Fiddleford has trouble wrapping his head around.]

How much do you kind of know?

Not any of the details!

[Look, he knows its weird he knows the future, okay.]

You were just listing off robots you'd made once and "Homocidal Pteradactyletron when my wife left me" just kind of came up. That's all you really said about it and Mabel and I weren't about to like, ask.

[Oh. This gives Fiddleford some interesting information, because Dipper just said robots, plural. From where he's standing the Pterodactyltron was the first one. So he made more? Hopefully less destructive ones, though he wisely thinks better of asking.]

Oh.

That's about the shape of it. I didn't take it well.

[Understatement of the fucking year, my guy!]

[Honestly the Gobblewonker was pretty dang cool, and he would say as much if asked. He's still kind of salty about the Gideonbot, though.]

Yeah. That's uh. That's definitely what it looks like.

[There's a long pause as Dipper tries to salvage this situation. He doesn't think Fiddleford wants to talk about it, and right now things feel a little weird between them? Which is valid and Dipper gets it, but he definitely still wants to do something for him. It sucks having stuff aired out like this.]

Hey, wanna see something cool?

[ Ford is about to lose his mind because he knows that blue fire. He's seen it before. It was all over Stan's mindscape whenever they encountered a damaged memory. Is that what this is, too? A memory Fiddleford doesn't entirely remember? One that he erased?

Probably not, if he's recalls the context for it it now, but the implications are so concerning Ford realizes he can't say it here. ]

[ The video feed is already on, though, so he has to say something, and after a moment he settles on: ]

I... suppose that's why parts of downtown look like they're significantly newer construction than the rest.

Ah, yeah. They were just starting construction up when I... when I stopped being there and started being here. Remarkably resilient town.

[Haha. They both know why.

Man, this is awkward, huh?]

I'd like to hear the explanation!

[Although he sounds a lot more interested than upset. Michael's against things like this generally, but as a demon, his threshold for where he'll actually get upset is sort of all over the place. Mostly that seemed very cool!]

I'd just recently finalized a divorce.

[A leads to B in his head, okay. This memory isn't even about destroying a town, really, it's about losing his wife and his son.]

I was not... uh. At my best. And when I'm in a bad way I design things to let off steam and this time I was in such a bad way that I built it. I wasn't trying to hurt those people, I was just trying to chase them out of the area so I could... so I could wreck things safely?

[He says it like a question because saying it loud actually makes it sound like ten times worse.]

Huh. Okay, makes sense.

[He guesses? Mostly, it turned out to be a LOT more depressing than he was hoping!]

I mean, sure, that's not great, but at least you bothered to worry about the people at all. Lots of folks don't.

[Yeah it's unfortunate, because on the face of it a giant pterodactyl robot is really cool and he'd like to associate it with better things. Oh well.]

I'd never go out of my way to hurt someone on purpose.

[Lotta qualifiers in that sentence, honey.]

...that's a bit of a low bar, but okay.

[As long as he doesn't hurt anybody here and now, Michael doesn't figure he's got much room to be judgey!]

What was with the - flickery blue fire thing?

[He's not even gonna argue it's a low bar. He knows it is. A low bar is kind of all he can clear at present. He is doing his level best, okay, it's just his level best is still objectively sort of bad.

At any rate he's glad for the subject change.]

I have no idea. This place is magic, right? This is happening because of magic? I figured it was the magic wearing off.

[Never mind that what he's seen of other memories do not include what looks like a VHS tape eating itself. He has a sneaking suspicion what it might be but he isn't about to voice it over what is basically a public phone call to the whole dang city.]

...could be.

[Not that any of the other memories did that.]

Well, I just ask because of this. [He holds up a hand, which bursts into blue flame.] Sort of my thing.

[That sends a shiver down the back of his neck that Fiddleford cannot adequately explain. He assumes he's forgotten why it frightens him, but he knows that it does.

Not this man's fault, probably. He stubbornly pushes down the red flag this just raised.]

So you're -- coldblooded? Too? [No, wait. That's the wrong phrasing. His phrasing gets bad when he's stressed.] A Coldblood.

Or could you always do that.

I'm a darkblood. That's just my fire.

[He tamps it down again, demonstration over.]

I actually didn't have blood before I got here, it's very weird.

[Oh boy. The red flag just popped right back up again. Haha. Haha, what? Didn't have blood?]

What. Uh. What were you? Before?

[Is that rude. He imagines that's rude to ask. But? Uh???]

A demon. I mean, I'm still a demon. That isn't really defined by lack of blood.

[And as for turning into a squid - well, he was that already.]

The human appearance is artificial. Like wearing a suit, or those little bird-shaped hand puppets you guys use to feed orphan baby birds.

[Fiddleford's face does something very funny, which is a feat considering at baseline his face is already pretty funny-looking.

Demon.

Fiddleford has never been the most devout of men, but he was still raised in rural Appalachia. He crosses himself walking near graveyards. He won't say the word 'devil' because speak it and he shall appear. He is not, shall we say, primed to react well to speaking with a demonic entity, even having erased his memory of the last time he saw one.]

Is that why you wanted the explanation. To judge.

[That's why anybody would want the explanation, but it has a different mouthfeel in this context, you understand.]

Honestly, I thought it would be funnier.

[At least he's? Honest?]

Look, my afterlife only serves a single version of Earth, and it's definitely not this one. Anyway, I think it's mostly down to chance and the whims of the Judge that we - immortals - ended up judging humanity in the first place. Most of us barely have an understanding of humans or ethics to begin with. So that's definitely not my job here.

[Will he judge people personally? Oh sure, of course, but everybody does that.]

I actually make clothes now, if you want any.

[It is kinda funny in a dark way, but Fiddleford is way too close to the situation both emotionally and temporally to admit to that. Maybe one day.

For now he chews over this information. It feels like a trick, is the thing. Demons are tricksters, and any demon offering you something has a motive. Right? On the other hand he's got like three shirts and one pair of pants to his name at present and that is not enough to be getting on with.]

So to be clear I have this right -- you're off duty and even if you weren't I wouldn't be under your jurisdiction.

[Now that... that is actually really funny. The idea that demons have, like, zoning, and literally do not care about souls that aren't their department. It makes a bizarre amount of sense.]

Just. You know. I'd like to not be possessed or cursed or locked into some sort of evil contract on top of everything else going on at present.

I can't possess or curse people. Those are human stories. Technically, I guess I'm capable of making a legally-enforceable contract...

[Huh. Is that something he should try...? No, he dismisses it after a moment of consideration, waving a hand.]

I think that'd amount to getting somebody to bribe their way into Heaven, it's inherently contradictory.

[Hm. See, demons lie, is the thing. Demons, he has been led to believe, lie about as often as they speak at all. He can't trust that any of this is actually true.

On the other hand, he trusts very little in general and he knows it's never got him anywhere to let that tie his hands. And if something goes really very wrong, he knows at least two people who he's sure are capable of performing an exorcism.

And on the other other hand, why on Earth would a demon who was actually angling to trick him tell him up front that they're a demon to begin with and then lie about the rest of it? Seems like it would be easier to just pretend to be Mr. Human Normalman.

Well. As Mr. Human Normalman as anybody can get in Trench.]

That's fair enough. In that case clothes would be nice, though I'm still working out ways to pay folks for things. If you have, I don't know, a dishwasher that needs fixing...?

[Do demons own dishware. He has to assume they do.]

Oh, my whole house is from the 1950s. Literally, it was just cut and pasted directly from the 1950s town to here. So the appliances still work...but they could probably work better.

[can you trick out his dishwasher]

[Oh buddy. Can he.]

I'm of the opinion that most everything can work better. You point me at what you want updated and it'll get done.

[He will even try not to install extraneous lasers, even though he doesn't understand why a laser could ever be extraneous.]

Works for me. My shop's at -

[Insert a somewhat convoluted explanation of how to find his storefront, which is necessary since there's no goddamn street names here.]

I'm usually around during the day, drop by whenever.

I want to ride on it.

[Meanwhile, the other twin --]

[... you know what, fair. Wild, but fair.]

That'd be one heck of a rodeo. There's not a lot of places to hold onto.

Pfft, like that's hard to fix. It must be super easy to build reins and a saddle compared to, like. The whole robot.

[Truthfully, Mabel would not usually be concerned with reins and a saddle, but in this circumstance one needs those things so that the pterodactyl can do loop-de-loops and you don't plummet to the ground over it. Mabel does, indeed, possess the usual Pines common sense.]

Okay-

Holy crap-

That was-

That was-

That was so freaking cool!

I mean all the property destruction and that not so much-

But do you think you could build another one of those!?

Or share some of the designs with me!?

I would love to go toe to toe with something that absolutely awesome someday!

Go toe to toe with-- you mean fight it?

[Wild. Still. He is pleased as punch that somebody else thinks it's super cool, because it is in a vacuum. He did a really good job on it before he used it for evil purposes.]

I don't know if that'd be possible without property damage unless we found a really big field nobody was using.

Yeah, I want to beat it up! I've taken on bigger and scarier robots before.

[Ruby is very much overlooking the evil purposes at the moment because it's just the coolest thing she has ever seen.]

There's plenty of forest around here too! We could always do it there.

If you wanted something built for the express purpose of fighting it I'd want to build it different. Sturdier, easier to repair, on account of building something just to destroy it would be a real waste of time and materials.

[And that's the limiting factor here, getting the material to make something that elaborate in the first place. Not to mention everything here runs on, like, moon magic, and he still is not yet used to designing anything with that in mind. He hasn't tried. He's been busy desperately attempting to get his feet under him.]

And it'd also depend on how you plan on fighting it. Something built for boxing would be different from something for a fencer.

[The fact that he is immediately giving his serious thought says a lot about him and also a lot about how desperately he always needs to have some kind of project to occupy him.]

Oooooh! That's not a bad idea. Maybe give it parts that can be swapped out on the fly incase they do need to get worked on! Like extra wings or arms depending on what go built.

[IT looks like he gears are turning in her own head as he talks but then she brightens up as he talks about styles.]

Oh no. I'm not a boxer or a fencer. That was my sister and best friend from back home- I use this!

[Don't mind her as she whips out a giant scythe and holds it up proudly.]

This is Crescent Rose, I built her myself.

[His face just lights up. What the heck is that, that's so cool? A scythe? People fight with those? It's as big as she is!

This is a Fiddleford from thirty years before he knows what anime is, alright, he's never seen this kind of thing before. But deep in his heart he is hard-wired to be into it.]

She's incredible!

[He has no problem gendering a scythe, his banjo is also a 'her'.]

So here's what I figure we do: I build something, you beat it up, I build it back better and we go from there. I'll need time, mind, I don't even have a work space of my own yet.

[ok like. yeah the destruction is definitely a problem and he should address that but-]

What a remarkable machine, how you managed such mobility is impressive.

[viktor.]

Eh, aside from the... intent. Dare I ask?

[oh heck is he about to get kicked off the cot for pterodactyl crimes

Well. Best to be honest.]

I honestly just wanted to smash something. Not somebody. I wasn't trying to hurt people, just chase them outta the way.

[And as far as he remembers, he did an okay job of it.

As far as he remembers.]

[well. honestly viktor can't say he doesn't understand that. even just watching other people growing up in the undercity, it wasn't odd to see anything smashed to pieces in a fit of rage. more often violence against others to make themselves feel in control, so...

points for not aiming for people? points off for the rest though.] Did the town itself do something that offended you?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ACCIDENTAL VIDEO] UN: Hadron

Video | un: Alcaid

no subject

1/3

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

no subject

no subject

un: eudaimonikos; video

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Video | un: alphatwin

no subject

no subject

Video | Clickclickbloom 1/2

2/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

video; un: v

no subject

no subject