estoria | and when we burst, start over [ OPEN ]

Entry tags:

and when we burst, start over [ OPEN ]

Who: Dipper & YOU
When: IC 5/26
Where: Various
What: Dipper died, but life goes on.
Rating/Warning: Talk of death

[ A: REENTRY ]

[ It’s all the same.

The Powerpoint. The spiel. The drop into VIVID. It’s even the same level he initially arrived in. He’s almost nauseous with the sense of deja vu - if he weren’t already nauseous with the feeling of being alive again.

He’s been dropped into the middle of the Tetris level, and he’s so disoriented at the simple impossibility of life that he reacts slower than he should. It’s not that he didn’t expect to be revived. Logically, he knew he would, but there’s only so far that logic can take him when something so final as death is so casually overwritten.

Finally, he does react - a Tetris block is about to flatten him, and he ducks out of the way. The block should clip his shoulder as he awkwardly run-falls away from it, but...it doesn’t. That’s weird. VIVID must be glitching.

It’s only then that he realizes he might not be the only one in this particular level right now. ]

[ B: REUNIONS ]

[ After logging out of VIVID, Dipper makes his way back to the apartment. It’s the obvious place to go, isn’t it? He definitely doesn’t want to go anywhere else. The thing is...he doesn’t really want to go there, either, and the thought of being isolated in his room once again makes his skin crawl with anxious dread. But he knows he can’t leave his roommates and friends hanging. Dipper can’t be sure who knows what happened to him, but he’s sure at least his close friends could probably guess if they weren’t outright told. They’re a sharp bunch.

He kind of wishes they weren’t so sharp right now.

Though he realizes with sharp responsibility that he can’t keep them in suspense forever, Dipper hesitates in front of the door, because he knows, he knows once he goes inside, the unavoidable things he’s been dreading will happen. He’ll have to own up to what happened. He’ll have to process the tidal wave of emotions he’s only just kept at bay with forced numbness. He’ll be reunited with his friends.

He’ll be reunited with the person who saw him die.

Swallowing against a dry throat, Dipper turns the handle on the front door and heads inside. ]

[ C: REPRIEVE ]

[ After talking to his roommates, there’s only so long that Dipper can stay in the apartment. There’s just too much of something he can’t name, and he has to leave.

Before he does that, he sends out a short message to Minato and Hiro. They knew what had happened to him, and they deserved to know he was back. There are probably others he should text, too, but sending messages to just the two of them already took more out of him than he wanted to admit.

And then, he leaves. Maybe it’s selfish - maybe he should stay where Yu and Rise could know he’s safe and well and alive, but he just can’t stay there anymore. He’s restless. So he heads out to take a walk.

He eventually makes his way to the gardens, hands shoved in his vest pockets and every so often, he turns quickly to glance over his shoulder. That’s strange, he could’ve sworn he saw someone watching him from the corner of his eye. He chalks it up to his nerves getting the better of him, but a nagging voice in the back of his head insists that there’s more to it than that.

The gardens aren’t really his typical go-to place to unwind, but at least they’re quiet and he doesn’t want much more than that at the moment. Eventually, he sits in front of one of the trees and leans back against it. It’s fine, for a moment, until something goes wrong and he falls backwards, right through the tree.

There is absolutely nothing to see here. There is definitely not a kid seemingly fused with the trunk of a tree. Move along. ]

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[ Dipper's eyes fall to where Hiro points out his wound. That sounds like one heck of a close call, and Hiro had likely acted just in time. He's not wrong. If it had gone on longer than that...

But it didn't. That's the point. Hiro lived, and Dipper can breathe a little easier knowing that, even if his friend is in pain as a result. ]

That is something. Did she, uh...get control of her mind again after that?

[ Must've been an awkward follow-up conversation. ]

[Hence the oversized shirt so it doesn't touch the sensitive flesh. He's unhappy with how things happened and he's thinking of everything that could have been different but…is there a point? Is there a point in overthinking it? (No, but more likely he will anyway.)]

Probably. Yang's got the mask now from what I've heard and Ruby's talked to her. I checked in just to make sure she wasn't totally off the deep end but that's about it. [He frowns a little, glancing down at his foot.] She got a couple of really good hits in. If I didn't get the mask off of her my next option would have been to have to shoot her.

[Not really what he wants to do either.]

So yeah. Real fun story. [His eyes drop to the pizza box, unsure of what to say next.] You and me. We don't really let stuff like that slow us down, do we?

[ He blows a breath through his lips. Hiro almost had to make the choice between saving himself and shooting one of his girlfriend's best friends. Dipper doesn't really envy him right now.

It sounds like a hot mess. And yet somehow that wasn't the most dramatic thing that happened to them in the city.

He's eaten his pizza down to the crust, and he starts to pick at it with his thumbnail. ]

...Nope. We get beat down and killed and yet here we are.

[ ...Maybe Dipper does have a flair for the dramatic, after all. ]

[Shooting Weiss is the last thing he'd ever want to do, but if push came to shove…

Still. He's actually pretty glad Dipper sees his point and he grins slightly to shift the topic again.]

Pretty sweet, right? It's kinda like being invincible. Or being a cockroach. […Hiro.] …I mean I'd rather be the first thing but the point is that we just keep going. It's what we do. Doesn't mean that stuff isn't hard sometimes. But the other thing we're both getting really good at is figuring out how to get back up and get better.

[So. That is to say, bro, hit him with your best shot. He shared. Now it's Dipper's turn.]

Heh...right.

[ Get back up and get better. Sure.

But how do you get better from being dead?

He can worry about that later. Now it's his turn to tell his story.

Dipper takes a deep breath, crossing his arms as he glances off into some undefined corner of the room. ]

I was out scouting when it happened. [ Any warm familiarity is gone from his voice, replaced instead by cold, detached tones. It's the only way he can get through this. ] Got cornered in a building by one of those big guys. I thought I was a goner then, for sure, but then Yu showed up.

That creature smashed him against the wall before he could even summon one of his personas.

[He doesn't breathe pretty much the entire time Dipper's talking. He's afraid of ruining this, of pushing too fast and not getting Dipper to talk but maybe it's just because it's what he'd do if someone pushed him too much. So he's silent and still and he appreciates the effort being put forth anyway.]

Those guys were way too big for us to be taking on by ourselves. [Yu hadn't told him the details either, but...that says a lot about the creatures out there.] But...but after he recovered you guys fought back? [It's better than "then what happened", in his opinion.]

[ Not pushing is good. Prompting, inquisitive questions are also good. It helps Dipper keep his distance, like he's recounting a story for a police investigation.

Even still, as he goes on, his voice gets quieter. ]

Yu was hurt badly enough he couldn't get up again right away. I had to improvise. [ He pauses, something like a swell of pride in his chest. If not for his conversation with Yu earlier, he would have been looking at this moment very differently. ] I actually kind of...ran on top of it and tried to pull out its wires to disable it while Yu got on his feet. We made a break for it as soon as he did, and I think I actually slowed the monster down, but...

[ That's when everything started to go wrong. Really wrong. ]

It slammed into the wall and the whole building started to come down.

[The scary thing is he can picture all of this in his head as his friend recounts the tale. He's seen Yu in varying states of injury (the jungle, of course) and he knows Dipper's clever when necessary. His eyebrows lift as Dipper explains his plan, a "whoa" under his breath because that takes guts.

But he doesn't say anything until Dipper's done talking entirely.]

Slowing down the monster meant slowing the fall of the building too, didn't it? Can't move as fast, can't destroy as fast.

[He can kinda see where this is already going.]

N-not - not entirely. [ Dipper swallows against a dry throat. His posture becomes increasingly agitated, his attention seemingly distracted as he picks at nail beds and casts about for some place to look. Like his mind could be anywhere else but mired in the story he's telling.

He knows it's been a couple of days, but it doesn't feel that way to him. It's still so fresh, the memories painted blindingly bright in his mind, playing over and over again.

Maybe this was a mistake, he should stop - he should leave -

No. He's seeing this through. ]

I slowed it down, and maybe...we would've both been goners otherwise. But it still had its weight to use against us, and when it hit the wall, it hit it hard. The building falling down would've been bad enough, b-but...the foundation started to give out, too.

[ He closes his eyes, then, drawing in a sharp breath through his nose. ]

Yu was hurt. He wouldn't have made it in time on his own. So I...

[ He made a choice. ]

I couldn't let another one of my friends die for me, Hiro.

[Part of him wants to slap Dipper's hands away from his nail beds since he's done that to himself often enough that he knows with enough picking they'll start to bleed. But he also knows that if he jars him he's not going to hear the rest of the story.

Maybe that would have been better though. He can imagine it, picture it almost perfectly clear and there's a very long, pregnant pause as he sort of rotates the implications around in his head.]

...you saved him. [But at what risk?] How? [God, why do bad things happen to good people? There's...something there, tugging at his brain. A reminder of something from his own world. Falling debris. Shattered armor. A sacrifice of a friend to save someone they care about. But he focuses on the here and now, not those thoughts.]

I pushed him ahead of me.

[ Was there something else he could have done? He isn't sure. It was all he could think to do in that moment, the only way he could be sure his friend would at least stand a chance of making it to solid ground. Dipper had to use his own momentum to get him there. He had to use the time he otherwise would have spent getting himself in the same position of safety.

It's too dangerous a question to ask himself, especially so, so soon, but the facts were the facts, simple, irrefutable.

If he hadn't done something, if he hadn't pushed Yu to safety, it would have been Yu who fell. It would have been Yu who died. ]

I didn't have time to think of something else. [ His tone is raw. ] Yu - he made it out the door. The ground fell out from under me instead.

[ He stops there, anxiety clawing in his chest. He isn't sure whether to mention how he held on, how for the briefest of moments he thought he might make it, only to be pulled into the darkness. ]

[It's exactly the same. For a long while he's silent and staring straight ahead, unsure of what to say or how to reassure him that it was the right thing. Of course it was the right thing. But at the same time...he doesn't want to think about Dipper on the other side of that door. He doesn't want to think about what his friend was thinking and feeling being left alone before his own death.

There's a shaky breath and he shakes his head a bit to clear out his thoughts before he mumbles more than anything.]

I think I can figure out the rest, dude. It's okay. ["You don't have to talk any more about it than you want to."] That...was a really brave thing.

[ He hadn't done it to be brave. It just all happened so fast.

Dipper is silently grateful that Hiro spares him the necessity of going into too much detail on what happened next. He'd fallen - that was the long and the short of it. Hiro doesn't need to know about the impossible fear that had burned through Dipper's mind as the inevitability of his fate really hit him. Hiro didn't need to know how Dipper's hand had slipped from Yu's. Hiro didn't need to know about falling, about light receding and pain receding, about everything receding, all of himself, until there was nothing left.

...But that hadn't lasted long, either.

His hands wind around his arms. ] There's something else you need to know. After I...after it happened, I woke up in the Nexus Code.

[It's unfortunate that he can even imagine it and he rubs his hands over the back of his neck to try and distract himself. They don't say anything for a moment as they allow those implications to settle in, but when Dipper speaks up again Hiro's eyes fly open and he turns to stare at his friend.]

...wait what? What do you mean you woke up there?

[ Dipper doesn't glance up to meet his friend's stare, though he can feel it on him. ] I mean...I woke up there. I could get up and walk around and saw all the people hanging lifeless in the air.

I saw Mabel in there, but she couldn't hear me.

[ No one could. ]

Nobody ever said that the dead head for the Nexus, too, but I guess that makes sense. [That's really creepy though.] Can I ask what else you saw?

There's not much more to tell. I wasn't in there for long before...

[ He attempts a shrug, but mostly he just ends up sinking more into the couch. ]

I woke up in VIVID. Just like when I first got here.

Did you have to play through the whole game, or could you log out immediately this time like we usually can? [It's an important question, Dipper. After that? He'll have a lot to think and discuss.]

I had to finish the level and go through their whole Powerpoint presentation again. Like...they made a new copy of me, or something.

[ So, that's a nice thought. Sure, these weren't their original bodies to begin with, but it's still an unsettling thought. ]

But you still kept all of your memories from this place. So it's like...it's just like if you disappeared for three days and came back with a bunch of new knowledge from home. There's really no difference between an upgrade and a death then.

[And that's what's interesting.] What bothers me is that you could move around the Nexus in the first place. Before you got here? A lot of people were transported there, too. Athena got pictures and everything, but we still don't know how people get transported there.

[ He looks at Hiro directly then, surprise coloring his features. ]

Really? I hadn't heard about that. [ Somehow, it's a little reassuring that not only the dead from the ruined city had been in there. ] It's...a little weird to think about it being a tangible place, you know? I mean, even if it was obviously made of code, everyone still looked real. Like if you could just wake them up...

[ Be bites his lower lip, mind whirring. ] When Mabel disappeared, Mosley told me it was because something stopped working with her code. But in there, she looked completely normal. Just...dormant. It's like they lost connection with her consciousness or something.

Yeah, it was around the time I got here. Maybe a little after that. I can't believe I never told you that. [He shakes his head like he's a total idiot for forgetting that part.] That's how I saw that one of my friends is still inside. I didn't even know she'd been on this planet before.

We're always told that people get sent back to the Nexus when people disappear, but it makes me wonder if that's what they're doing. Reprogramming. Everybody's in like hypersleep to preserve their code but CERES is busy messing with it. That could explain why you, me, Ruby and Tadashi have been here before but don't remember any of it. Like they don't want old memories overriding our new actions out here.

I want to find it. I bet if I could get inside and hook up, maybe I could figure out how the whole thing works.

You mean, hack it from the inside out? [ Sounds risky, but what did they do that wasn't?

Still, Dipper's reluctant to encourage his friend. It's not that he doesn't think Hiro could do it, but...well, he did just get back from being dead. From seeing his sister and being unable to communicate with. Unable to bring her back with him. It reiterates just how important it is that they get them out of there, but at the same time -

- in the darkness, the air is rushing through his hair and -

There's so much at stake. ]

Yeah. [He's aware it sounds crazy, judging by how his tone's still calm and even. He take a deep breath to think of how to proceed with his line of rationality.] If I could see what I'm directly working with it'll be a lot easier. It's like working with CSS or any other stylized code. It's a lot easier to see it and weave in and out of the actual container than just slap stuff together and hope it works.

...Yu already told me trying to bring Tadashi back was a big thing. I know this is risky but Dipper think about it. Think about everything we've already accomplished without getting caught yet. It's like they're begging for me to test this.

[ As Hiro explains himself, Dipper's hands ball at his sides and start to tighten. The thing is, he can see where Hiro is coming from. On every project Hiro has set out to complete so far, he's been successful. Dipper has seen firsthand the feats his friend has been able to accomplish. Hiro knows much more about this kind of thing than Dipper does, and he understands there are risks involved. So Hiro reassures him.

But...did he, really?

When he finally speaks, his voice is low and resolute. ]

That's not an invitation, Hiro. That should be a warning.

[ They'd already accomplished so much - it's true. But what happens with the other shoe falls?

What happens when Hiro...winds up like him? ]

Look. I trust you. I know if you say you can do it, then you can. I don't underestimate you, but I think you underestimate them. This. Everything. [ He looks up, sharp and desperate, his voice rising. ] You think you have all the answers, but this world is out of your control. It's out of all of our control. What if CERES intervenes? What if they decide to wipe the code once it's been tampered with? What if they capture you? What if you end up like Korra and Yosuke?

[ There's so much. So much if, and it's swimming, sinking, swimming in his head. ]

and when we burst, start over [ OPEN ]

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