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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. ]
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. ]
no subject
Lalonde, see you in a bit.
[He is like. in FULL ON protective mode with Dave now? He's barely keeping himself from putting a hand on Dave to keep him safe and steer him to some place not dangerous.
When they're in the hall]
You're sure you won't let me see to that wrist? It's the least I can do, gettin' you into this.
no subject
[ like it's some sort of balancing scale, but also - he's never had anyone offer to take care of his injuries before. bro...might have done it once or twice, back before dave was considered self-sufficient, but it's pretty hard to remember that far back. ]
It's cool. I ain't met an injury I can't first aid so far.
[ and he isn't sure if he wants anyone else trying. ]
'Sides, it's not that bad. It'll heal in a few weeks. [ or months. it's always hard to tell with this kind of thing, honestly. ]
no subject
[Like. That's not how it balances out there kid.]
no subject
[ SUDDENLY THOSE EXIST WHEN IT'S IN HIS FAVOR THEY EXIST. ]
no subject
[He wasn't even going to push the point but he disagrees with this argument.]
no subject
[ apparently this is now a bargaining situation. ]
no subject
no subject
[ a favor. he has no idea what the fuck he would even ask for, when mostly what he's asked for is nothing, inaction and no surveillance, but he's trying to find the right thing to say in the way kids who are regularly hurt try to do. the words that will make the other party happy enough to let them off the hook.
dave has never been good at finding those words, but god does he always try to find them. ]
no subject
Like I said, Dave. We don't have to worry about that.
I just wanted you to know you helped a lot today, and I appreciate it. Thanks.
no subject
[ not that he has a day job. aside from, uh, sales from his comic site. which are always kind of questionable, since his fanbase isn't as big as dave makes it out to be. ]
I should really get home just in case though.
[ in case bro reappears from wherever, he means. no texts to get home so bro probably isn't (or just didn't care where dave was?) but he wouldn't want the guy to expect him somewhere and be disappointed. ]
no subject
[This is a dumb excuse. He is just worried. But, because Dave seems antsy:]
No problem if that's a no. Strangers with candy and shit. Or, uh, cookies.
no subject
...Ok. But I'm gettin' off a stop before my block in that case.
[ THOUGH dirk may not have to wait for sheer chance for the next contact from dave? when he gets off? ...dave strider is a work in progress ]
no subject
[Then Dirk will escort him mostly home and definitely spot the fare. He wishes he could give him the panini? He guesses he'll feed them to Evie.]
no subject
Good luck with all the people who wanna kill you and stuff?
no subject
[This is. Awkward.
Dirk watches Dave leave in the manner of a sad cat. which is terrible because cats should never be sad. but he hopes he gets a chance to feed dave again, and eventually get him to safety]
no subject
it's three weeks later, tops, when dirk's phone rings. the one he gave dave the number to? it's like. four in the afternoon what the hell is dirk doing is he beating people up or EATING A SANDIWCH, DIRK or...what.
for the record, dave's schedule has been perfectly normal up to today. bro has only shown up like one time in the past three weeks and the kid's funds are. what they are. but he's fine!!! clearly. ]
no subject
[Two things: there is the sounds of some kind of combat, and also, his comment seemed a little muffled?
Dirk takes the sandwich out of his mouth and kicks someone in the face so he can continue this conversation.]
I'm here. Sorry.
[The sandwich-holding hand punches a guy who just got up. HE WILL EAT THIS SANDWICH! after talking to Dave]
no subject
You're busy. Sorry. [ belatedly the thought pops up that he should complain about dirk not even acting like he didn't know who was calling, but for once he doesn't voice the fact that dirk could stand to be less Creepy. it's more a flicker of thought than anything else, there and then gone immediately. ]
no subject
[No one. died? shit he's awkward. act fast Strider.] You've got my full attention. What's up?
no subject
Uh. Sorry, what? [ he zoned out while dirk was. talking. and beating people up there. ] Do you - are you in Houston still? You said once you only work in Houston but maybe you suddenly stopped doing that.
no subject
no subject
Oh. That sucks. It's hot? Melting hot. Become one with the pavement and let things run you over hot.
[ anyway: there's another kind of long pause before dave finally gets around to asking: ]
Was whatever you just did the only number to come up today? [ people who still aren't sure how this works: dave. still not sure he buys it. STILL WANTS TO KNOW, THOUGH? FOR SOME REASON? ]
no subject
[lmao dirk is. changing directions to walk towards Dave's apartment now.]
no subject
haha shit. ]
Does that mean I could like jump off a building and not die, or would doin' that spit out a number?
[ for the record he is not considering jumping off a building. ]
no subject
No number for two reasons. One, suicides aren't considered crimes. Two, only premeditated acts get numbers. Crimes of opportunity are outside our scope.
[Nngh he's kinda hovering here on the edge of pushing but he doesn't want to push too far so he decides to play it a little longer. If Dave can ask, then Dirk doesn't risk alienating him by being too aggressive or intrusive. So: wait.]
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this is over 400 comments and i'm 1 and half seasons into this show, i h8 u
yes and i'm proud
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