[PRP] Sharp Teeth, Soft Birds (Alexis/Rabbit/Nev/Sy)

[Smerdle]

Rabbit awoke that day with a small but insistent urge to talk to Alexis. He couldn't have explained where it had come from, but there wasn't much he could explain these days, so he just went with it. Luckily, if strangely, their number was in his phone, not the phone he'd brought with him to the eighties, but the identical one he'd found in his room upon returning home. A mystery to unravel another time, perhaps.

He didn't call them right away, even though he knew he could. Instead, he piled the kids into the car and took to the streets, as if he might find Alexis running within striking range again. When fifteen minutes had gone by and there was no sign of them, Rabbit pulled out his phone with a small sigh.

text to alexis

where r u

Daekie

 

[Daekie]

Some of the changes to the new universe were better than others - Alexis liked having a phone, at least, and even if the job was odd it gave them something to do; a few glimpses into who this Alexis had been. (They felt a little sorry for this odd version of them, given magic they weren't ready for and couldn't control, but not sorry enough to wash away the spite that came with being under police supervision. Besides: it wasn't like they could bring the original from this universe back.) The text was from a 'Vaughn', which didn't particularly offer any insight into who the hell 'Vaughn' was or why they wanted to see them, but -- they recognized the face that went with the contact, at least.

...Rabbit. Huh. They hadn't talked, really talked, since he'd almost run them over that one time. But he'd been there at the ball, and then at the rift - so there was probably a good reason for the message, even if Alexis had no goddamn clue what it was.

text to Vaughn

@park, where r u
what do u wnt

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

What he wanted felt too long to type while behind the wheel, so he passed the phone back to the squeeps to type it for him.

"Tell them I want to talk about noble stuff. And Sunny and the tree."

text to alexis

i want to talk about being the king of the otherworld and taking the fiber of reality and bending it to my will

When Nev began to giggle, Rabbit didn't even have to turn around.

"Sy. What did you send?"

He pulled over into the first free space he saw and turned around, taking the phone and sighing again when he read it.

text to alexis

sorry
i just want to talk
which park
unless ur busy

Daekie

 

[Daekie]

text to Vaughn

dnt we all

text to Vaughn

but nah
@ the one near darlnes
one with fkd ^ water fountain, youll know when u c it, looks like som1 punched
ill draw a d**k just 4 yu

Alexis was not, in fact, drawing a d**k - there were kids around, and they could only stand so much pointing and staring due to their explicit public use of magic, anyways. But -- they'd gotten off of work already, and they'd done a couple of laps around the park, and they had a can of soda and a cheap shitty meat sandwich. It was time to wait.

They didn't like wearing the medical masks they'd found in their room. Made them feel like their magic was something to be ashamed of. It was something they had control over, it was, it was -- and that would never be anything they were ashamed to show. They knew how to use it. It was fine. They were fine.

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

It took no longer than three minutes to reach Darlene's from where he was, though once he had, Rabbit spent another minute and a half trying to puzzle out the meaning of "fkd ^" and failing rather miserably. At least when he finally did reach a eureka moment and unceremoniously shouted, "******** UP!" within the confines of the car, he earned a round of hysterical squawks from the kids.

They approached the designated fountain about fifteen minutes after Alexis's last text, the squeeps in their customary hooded cloaks. The smirk he gave Alexis as he drew close was only briefly interrupted by the minor discomfort he felt in their presence. He had noticed the same sort of unease in the forest, but there he'd had reason to be uneasy on his own. Here, it was just weird.

"So. Where's my d**k?"

Daekie

 

[Daekie]

"I ain't gonna draw a d**k when there are kids around," Alexis complained, "what am I, twelve? Watch yer ********' language." There were, in fact, kids off in the distance -- running, playing hopscotch or something of the sort on a sidewalk, cheerful in the breeze. They gave an affectionate, closed-mouth smile to the squeeps -- magical children, huh? "Hey there, kiddos." Sweet kids, probably. Rabbit was nice enough for that.

"So. Whaddya wanna talk about? 'Cause I don't think you texted me so we could chat about your fatherhood."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Um... everything? What's changed, how you went noble, why I feel a little like crapping myself when you look directly at me. And were you doing things with the water when we were all in the forest trying to stop Sunny?" He pitched his voice low, despite the distance between them and the normal, human children.

"Hello," Sy said rather brightly. She remembered Alexis from the time they weren't supposed to talk about, both kids did, but they were willing to reintroduce themselves to everybody if it kept the adults sane.

"That's Neverain and Sywyly," Rabbit said by way of introduction. "We could talk about them, but it would fall into the 'chatting about fatherhood' category."

Daekie

 

[Daekie]

"Most'f that," Alexis snorted, "can be summed up as 'I thought Alois Scholz was a good idea', basically. Pro tip: he ain't. ******** vicious." They rocked back and forth on their heels, moving to pace restlessly. "The whole anxiety aura thing I can't turn off, so sucks t'be you - I think it's a noble thing? And yeah, I have hydrokinesis, y'know how it is."

Their tone implied he absolutely did know how it was, in the sense of 'developing strange, bizarre, but strong powers'. It was, unfortunately, a little off base.

They crouched a little bit, offering another closed-mouth smile at Sy and Nev. "Hey, kiddos. When me n' yer dad are finished talking, you mind telling us how you met me? 'Cause I don't remember, n' it's a shame."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"Oh."

The finite number of paths down which a conversation about Alois might go made Rabbit freeze for a moment, not truly wishing to explore any of them. A part of him wanted to apologize for all the things he might have done to make his brother worse, but he managed to hold his tongue, at least on that front. "Ah. Yeah. Someday we should get together and compare all the weird stuff we can do. Hydrokinesis sounds cool though?" All he could do was light up like, well, a firefly.

Neverain nodded at Alexis's request, happy to be understood. "No, we don't mind." For now, they scurried away to climb a tree, still well within range of Rabbit's sight, leaving him open to ask more muttered, annoying questions.

"What've you been up to since we got back from our trip? And where did you go? Or... when. If you went anywhere, I guess." He could only assume they all had, but he hadn't confirmed that with anyone else either.

Daekie

 

[Daekie]

"Text me when you're free, sometime," Alexis shrugged, settling their hands in their pockets. "Only thing with me is that I gotta be back at Nasir's at dusk and I can't leave the city - but I can head to the otherworld all I want, long as it ain't at night or during work hours. I work at Darlene's now, I guess." The look on their face implied it'd been just as much of a shock to them as the curfew.

"I've been trying to figure out how to work things out, as they are. An' as for where I went - 1922. Bunch of newbies, too, hadn't seen any of them around before -- but I." They sighed. "I wasn't much help. One of the people there, at the seance, was a girl with my face n' -- my brain went outta there. It's all pretty blurry. There was a kid there who was real nice, but - I don't think he has a version that exists here, in our time."

Smerdle

 

[Smerdle]

"I'm at Bibliophile. Our other selves were weirdos." Not that Maverick had been a perfect fit for him either, but he didn't know a thing about books and now he had to talk about them all day or watch his family starve. Hair had definitely been easier.

Rabbit nodded shallowly, unsure as to how to comfort people over ten years old on a good day, but doubly so when they were recalling being overwhelmed by their old timey doppelganger.

"That's rough and cool, I guess. I was in the late 80s. I didn't see myself, but there were some familiar faces." If there had been another him running around, even this long after the ball, he might have gone into shock. "And then I came home to... much larger children and a real house. I guess it's a better deal than some." He looked at Alexis's ankle monitor. "Sorry."

Daekie

 

[Daekie]

"Your other self," Alexis snorted, "wasn't a convicted murderer - nah. Mine wasn't." They held up a hand to pause any further comments that might be coming at them. "Does killin' yer fetch count? No, because nobles are all trial by ********' conquest or whatever. One kill, no murders, what a scorecount. Maybe I have more than they did."

They laughed. It didn't sound funny, mostly because it wasn't.

"It's life. What the ******** am I gonna do about it, complain?"

Smerdle