lucybox | whatever

whatever

EPISODE 1: meeting
EPISODE 2: the latvian mob
EPISODE 3: a concussion
EPISODE 4: bench talk
EPISODE 5: break-in

[ what would someone following the number connected to dave strider notice during recon? well.

dave strider, thirteen, gangly and edging on getting taller but way too skinny, angular and bony in a way that says he could stand to eat more food more often. he constantly wears shades. he equally constantly wears long-sleeved shirts and jeans in the houston heat. dave is too careful to ever let that shirt ride up enough to show what's underneath, and he never lets his shades get jostled off his face in public.

the kid has more of an online presence than his brother. he runs a webcomic with an avant garde sense of style and some truly disturbing strips that occasionally seem to correspond with times his number has come up; he sells shit on the site sometimes, t-shirts or book compilations or keychains. the money isn't saved but tends to get spent on groceries. he trolls internet forms at random but does seem to speak regularly to at least three other kids, and has for at least three years. these conversations are all mostly superficial even though the kids are close. the deepest he ever gets in them is with rose lalonde, who lives in new york. sometimes they talk about his dreams.

to each of them he only has positive things to say about his brother, whom he idolizes.

the other half of his computer use seems to go to online school, which dave does all right on. he only occasionally misses deadlines, but more frequently turns shit in ahead of time. he participates haphazardly on the forums as required, but aside from an odd sense of humor and a decent grasp on the subjects, he doesn't say anything worth reading.

following dave in person is harder. he doesn't leave the apartment often except to go to the store, or occasionally the library. he has hung out in the park once or twice but always goes home the second his cellphone buzzes with a text. his interactions with other people are limited; he's polite and casually friendly and charming to the grocery store employees and the librarian, and he doesn't turn people away when they talk to him exactly, but he never discusses anything of note and always excuses himself pretty quickly. dave doesn't like to be touched and doesn't let it happen, never needing to flinch back because he moves faster than that, and doesn't let himself get in the position where someone will try to touch him.

at the store he gets apple juice and bread and peanut butter. or junk food that keeps longer, kept at the back of his closet. nothing he has to refrigerate or heat up. at the library he gets art and film books or photography collections or comics or shit like my teacher is an alien or animorphs or pretty much anything. he doesn't usually check them out to go back home, unless it's a thing for school. when he signs his name on anything it's a careful angular scrawl and he likes to do it in red - dave always keeps a red pen in his pockets. at the park he tends to sit on a bench with good sightlines and sometimes he'll feed birds bits of torn bread and sometimes he'll scroll through shit on his phone (tumblr, random sites, pesterchum) but mostly he just kind of sits there and listens to music.

he downloads a lot of music. sometimes he mixes up new shit and uploads it, sending it to his friends or occasionally just keeping it to himself. dave maintains some social media accounts but is weird about them. there are disjointed quotes or phrases and oddly angled pictures and he seems to treat them like some sort of joke only he gets, but he's almost dedicated to them like he doesn't seem to be to a lot of shit. there's a blog he used to update but doesn't any longer about tony hawk and other things and every glimpse into his mind through his words is unclear and a little off.

a lot of the time he seems to be in the apartment alone. he isn't always, despite appearances, and he knows it. there's a ton of surveillance equipment inside the apartment and dave treats the cameras and recording devices with a casual weariness and wariness. his brother is constantly monitoring both dave and the equipment; fucking with that would probably be a bad idea for anyone paying attention, but it might be possible to jack some of those frequencies, if you're careful.

inside the apartment he mostly stays in his room. when he comes out he's nervous and cautious but nothing ever shows on his face. even in the sanctity of his own room this is true; dave doesn't emote when he can help it and even when he jumps when a trap goes off, his expression doesn't change an iota. when he speaks his voice is low and too-texan, but he doesn't usually unless he's outside of the apartment and has to. there is no point, since his brother seems disinterested in speaking to the kid. he rambles in his interactions with other people online but in person always cuts them short, seemingly uncomfortable with talking for too long.

the one activity that takes up most of his time, however, is training. at any hour of the day or night dave might be called to the roof. bro owns the entire building, and no one has ever called in anything about the striders. if they have, it was taken care of quickly and quietly and nothing ever got to the people who might have done something with it. bro watches everything and this is how things go: dave goes up the stairs with a sword in hand and once he's at the top it starts and then it keeps going until it's over. sometimes it goes on past that. it can take hours on end or only a few minutes, and there isn't any way to predict which it's going to be. eventually dave's left alone and he lies on the roof for a bit until he picks himself up and goes back inside the apartment. he patches himself up quickly and efficiently and doesn't complain at all. the most he has ever done is inform john egbert he got his ass kicked, and john assumed dave was exaggerating like dave always does.

here's another thing to notice: dave strider is used to being watched. he's paranoid about it, trying to read from every tiny clue in his life what will happen next and coming up blank. so when there's an extra pair of eyes he notices after a few hours, and he doesn't like the feeling. he picks himself up off the roof and ignores a broken wrist and too many cuts to count and probably a few cracked ribs in order to lean over the edge of the railing, eyes scanning surrounding buildings with a tense little frown.

it's pointless to tell bro. it might be bro. is he supposed to confront the change or ignore it? it's impossible to tell when bro wants him to roll with something or dig his heels in, and if he can't figure it out quick before the inscrutable time limit runs out, bro will probably be disappointed. and also maybe mad? it's hard to tell if bro ever gets mad or anything else at all, but dave would like to avoid that eventuality and measure up, so...

so.

right.

he can't spot who might be watching him but he didn't expect to. he can never spot bro in the apartment, either. so maybe he needs to change the location? maybe this is counter-surveillance training. it's not the usual so it has to be something else, after all. he's too tired to think it through but that doesn't really matter because there's probably a time limit and he shouldn't be too tired for it so he can't be.

the next day dave will completely disregard his usual daily schedule and leave the apartment. his injuries are taken care of even if he's oddly careful about his wrist, a makeshift brace involving a wrist watch making it casual. dave can always make his walk seem easy and relaxed no matter what he's hiding. he doesn't go to any of his usual locations. instead he goes to the movie theater, wastes precious grocery money on a ticket for a random action movie, and immediately ditches through an emergency exit in the theater once he's zipped in.

he loiters around out of sight to see if he can catch anyone coming out after him.

there are a dozen other little trips and traps like that planned if his simple first-ditch effort doesn't work as he zigzags around the city with absolutely no gameplan, testing the waters to see what comes up. there's no possibility of waiting for probably-bro to explain himself, because bro doesn't do explanations. so. time to figure out the rules as best he can and hope it's what he's supposed to be doing.

the lack of any ominous texts to his phone is either encouraging or terrifying. dave can't be fucked to figure out which it is, exactly. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ dirk wins. a puzzled look? ]

How do people not notice you followin' them?

[ he hadn't even fully seen dirk so much as felt someone following him around. whatever tipped him off, it was just...years and years of knowing that feeling and noticing it intensifying.

do other people not have that?

dave stands, not abrupt, as the bus nears the stop they should be getting off on (he thinks). ]

[Is Dave. Genuinely confused by this?

Holy shit.]

Most people haven't had your trainin'. [He barely resists air quotes.] Believe it or not, but it is genuinely not common for people to have your level of awareness about their surroundings. Even criminal types are usually not that alert. [He tilts his head, thinking about it as he heads to the back exit.] Some military people can pick up on it. Usually just the ones with covert ops training.

I mean, I figured like, John wouldn't be able to. But aren't the people who get involved in whatever shit you're into usually not normal? i.e., the latvian mob.

[ they probably should have noticed dirk sooner, actually. -10 points from the mob. ]

Ok, so what's your usual approach, batman? Wait, you're not well-dressed enough for that. [ hm. ] Joker.

[What. The fuck?]

I'm not Batman [he says in a Kevin Conroy voice] or the Joker. [HE DOESN'T SAY IT IN A MARK HAMILL VOICE] We're not from comic books.

[Blah blah getting off the bus.]

Like I said, most criminals, including the Latvian mob, are not as alert as you are. Only time we come across someone this aware is if they're from a situation like yours or they're former covert ops of some kind.

Approach depends on the number. Early recon can help us out. Sometimes it means undercover work, sometimes it means tailin' people until they need the rescue.

You kinda talk like you think you are.

[ from comic books, dave means. his hands are jammed in his pockets, though his left hand more carefully. he does not look around and moves very casually, like nothing is wrong at all. ]

What does "rescue" even mean.

[ he still has no idea what the fuck they were trying to do for him. ]

Usually, it means someone is shooting at them, or about to put somethin' nasty into their food, and we remove the threat and tie 'em up nice for the cops or we drag them out of there until we can tie the threat up nice for the cops.

[also Dirk will just accompany Dave to the line for Comicpalooza tickets I guess? Because they're doing that now.]

[ WELP. DAVE DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW THAT? he doesn't want bro to go to jail or something, christ. it's his own fault if he can't handle the training. which he can. ]

What do you think your mob dude is gonna even do?

[ time to change the topic entirely as they wait in line. dave pulls out his phone and starts messing around with it, but he isn't doing anything more interesting than checking in with jade, who is apparently awake now, and leaving john and rose a few messages for whenever they get out of school. ]

That's what we're here to find out. Hell, we could even have it wrong, and he could be the target of a Green Lantern geek's unbridled rage for something he posted online about Sinestro. [Which. Probably warrants explanation:] He's really into that franchise.

The job is to surveil the dude until we find out and then stop the bad thing from happenin'.

I mean, I figured, he had a phone charm.

[ that is. apparently why dave figured this was a safe bet? THAT'S A SMALL THING, DAVE... ]

For that kinda thing to be a thing he'd have to be a big name fan though?

[Huh.]

Good eye.

[It's to be expected, but still.]

He's pretty dedicated on the forums. In hours when he isn't trafficking in drugs and children, he really keeps up to date on the big discussions.

What's his username?

[ dave is already heading towards some fandom boards on his phone. he. does not know how to take the praise (hasn't known what to do with it any time dirk has given it) so he just doesn't address it for the time being. ]

AM-5010. Dash between the letters and numbers. [He guesses it's a Green Lantern reference or something? Jake will tell him if it's important. Dirk is following Dave now because he is just like 'i guess Dave gets this more than i do so okay.' It works with his cover, vaguely.]

[ i mean dirk has to buy the tickets so when they get to the front of the line dave will kind of wait for that then hold out his non-broken-wrist for a wristband.

he is otherwise............

yeah there's no way he isn't leaving a few inflamatory comments on these forums as he absently reads through the mark's comment history. ]

[Dirk does get Dave the wrist band. He got them a three day pass? Why not, it's Jake's money.]

...Dave. Are you trollin' my number?

[ dirk you need a wrist band, too. or...just dave does because Minor or something but. he raises his eyebrows. ]

Maybe. It's not like I'm doin' it under my name.

[ he's a 13yo troll what do u expect ]

Mostly I'm readin' his shit, though. But if he gets all angry won't he be easier to spot, anyway?

[Well. Whatever.]

Guess your number can't be any more up at this point. Will you be cool if I put English back on? [He's had his phone bricked this entire time.]

I didn't ask you to take whoever off.

[ that is not a yes or a no, dave. ]

It's a yes-or-no question, Dave.

It's more dangerous for you if you don't, right?

[ dirk turned off his support slash cheat system. ]

So you should turn it back on.

[Still not an answer to the yes-or-no question. Dirk watches Dave a moment longer, and then he slips the battery pack back in.] English?

[There is of course the response. A second reply comes from Roxy: apparently they worried and started tracking him by CCTV camera and she was coming to find him and check he was okay.]

We're all right. Me and Dave are gonna enjoy a trip to a comic convention. I wouldn't mind a little back-up, though. How's our friend on the force?

[Crocker, they tell him, is also ready to shout at him because she has found out that there is now a kid attached to Dirk's hip on this particular mission.]

Dave is helpin' me out. We'll be fine. Anything new?

[There's a pause as Dirk's face goes blank. HE. Does not like what he was just told??]

We probably don't have to tail the number everywhere. Is there anything on the schedule you want to hit up for a while?

[ it isn't a yes or no. dave goes quiet and doesn't interrupt, though, expression shuttering as he turns his attention to his phone again. he does bored and disaffected teenager well. the minute cues that had existed for a short time are gone as wariness washes in, but the average person wouldn't notice the increase in caution.

he doesn't demand an explanation for what dirk was told, though his shoulders tense when dirk's expression changes.

dave looks up to scan the area at dirk's question. he clocks the security cameras before his eyes go back to his phone and he pulls up a con schedule, staring st it blankly. a lecture is probably cheapest. there's some stuff he wouldn't mind checking out based off his own interests - he assumes dirk and whoever the fuck already know this - but after a few moments he says instead: ]

Section, uh, C? For booths. There's a thing over there.

[ they're selling merchandise for kids shows dave definitely does not watch in that direction. but he has zero interest in spending money on himself just now. as long as he's here, he may as well get rose and jade squiddle keychains or something. john he'll have to locate something else for. maybe he'll tell them bro took him to the con. they're all always talking about the time they spend with their respective guardians and complaining about said time spent. dave always feels obligated to blend, keeping up a steady stream of how much quality time he spends with his brother even if he can never bring himself to complain. he's wondered sometimes what bro thinks of this subterfuge.

realizing that dirk and english and whoever have also probably read that shit and formed opinions is not a thing dave cares to spend time doing. it's not a thing he can pretend away, but he can ignore it.

just focus on john and rose and jade and the casual lies they'll get along with a trinket each. it has always been more acceptable to spend money on their shit without fussing over it anyway. his mental budget always includes holiday presents for each of them, after which comes shit he wants or whatever and food. bro tosses him cash sometimes or doesn't react when dave retrieves it which amounts to the same thing, and he makes Enough between that and his own haphazard enterprises to kind of pretend he has more disposable income than is strictly true. his purchases probably make little sense when laid out on a board, except for the food and the holiday gifts and the part where he got a camera almost impulsively with some savings, second hand, as a present to himself on his birthday a few years back. most of his dead things collection was found and bottled personally but he'd idly added a mummy hand to his online shopping cart when he'd fucked up enough to break an arm a few years before that.

it's probably childish to waste funds to distract himself from anything he doesn't want to think about but it works and bro has never given any indication this particular behavior is disapproved of or even acknowledged so there's no real reason to stop. ]

There's a little Squiddles section.

Cool. I figured you wouldn't object if we skipped tailin' our guy into a Maid Cafe. [That's what made him go blank: he does not want to go into a Maid Cafe, at all, to follow their number. That is where they have record of his last credit card transaction from about five minutes ago and Dirk is happy to kill time with Dave in the interim.

Despite Dirk actually melding pretty decently, Dave might notice a certain strangeness in the posture; Dirk is in Protective Detail mode, which means high alert, constant scanning grounds, keeping close enough to Dave that he could get between him and a bullet if it came to that. It's a split of his attention but he doesn't mind in the slightest.]

I don't really care? [ A SHRUG from the teenager, who is less talkative for the time being. he doesn't actually care. maid cafes don't sound like they'd do much for him (mostly dave's thought is "well a cafe has food so") but admittedly he's also simply exposed to so much in the way of weird pornography that fetish things are. whatever. they exist and he can deal.

the Protective Detail mode actually weirds him out more than the maid cafe thing, for the record. no on has ever, like...done that. he's not about to call dirk out on it while dirk's pals are listening in, though.

he hauls up a chat window with rose despite knowing 1) she is in school and 2) it's likely people other than bro, apparently, are listening in. it's little more than a guess-where-i-am note dropped in for her to get back to him whenever. he leaves jade and john's chats alone for the moment, though he comments on an image jade sent of her garden.

then he checks back on the green lantern forms to leave a few more comments out of sheer 13yo annoying tendencies. ]

But you're clearly not down, so. [ to the Squiddles section it is. dave never got the hype any more than he got the tanglebuddies thing, but the girls like them. or...rose likes ruining them into eldritch horrors, which dave figures for her means she likes them.

he doesn't have to doublecheck their favorite characters. that's information that sticks, because it's about his friends. dave tries to ignore protective detail mode to step off to glance at some keychains, though he has never quite lost his own wariness at any point in the conversation. he was just less closed off before the surveillance reminder. ]

[Maid Cafes are weird and Dave shouldn't have to go to them? He deals with enough weird pornography shit that he should be protected from as much as possible.

Indeed, protectiveness is the name of the game here. Dirk stays near Dave, not so close as to crowd him, but a good position to help him assess who is moving where and that he can get between Dave and harm, if it comes to it.]

[ dirk have you looked at the smuppet porn sites. (dave wonders sometimes if he's caught in any of those videos. he is Pretty Sure he is in some of the snuff ones, and etc.)

dave...doesn't step out of range? his shoulders hunch a little as he narrows his selections down to two keychains - one green, one purple - and digs into his pocket for the cash. ]

Do you have some kinda plan?

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I DID ALL OF THE LAST TAG ON MY PHONE, PRAISE ME

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