Harriet + Tyrus: Internet Friends

[jupiter_bands]

Who: Harriet and Tyrus
When: Tuesday
Where: Riverwalk by Sellwood River
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Monster! And monster death. And allusions to offscreen violence/murder.

In which Harriet still does not know how to interact with boys.



Tyrus had practiced being Travis in public, but he kept it mostly to acquaintances of Travis's. He wanted to be sure his act was just right before he pretended to be him around friends who knew him well. He had no conversation logs for his interactions in person, just a few recorded funny conversations on Ventrilo and a couple of anime fan dub samples. He could explain some of the differences away, but certainly not all of them. Meeting Harriet seemed like a good way to practice. She had a preexisting idea of what he was like, but hadn't met him in person before.

There were still differences. Subtle clues that Travis had changed a lot since he was hit by a car, allegedly. Tyrus was written to have a taste for finer things in life and Upas gave him a considerably higher salary than Travis ever made. He discovered things like suits, slacks, polo shirts, steak dinners, and fancy Italian places and immediately fell in love with them. Travis's Facebook, conversely, showed him wearing jeans and a T-shirt usually.

He decided to dress halfway between the two. As a result, he was standing in one of the areas on the banks of the Sellwood River: a paved riverwalk, with shops and restaurants and various people doing artsy Earth stuff. He was dressed down, he though, but wearing a tucked in polo shirt and slacks, which made him slightly more dressed up than his former player ever really did. He also had a Fall City University windbreaker on, which he decided was too much because it was way too hot for it.

He had a plastic bottle of water in hand, which he tapped busily against the railing running along one concrete embankment on the river front. He realized, awkwardly, that he had no idea what this Nix looked like. Tyrus pulled out his -- Travis's -- mobile phone and typed out a quick text message.

"Down by the water. I look like my character, because I was fifteen and lame."

Harriet actually hadn't a clue what Travis looked like or how he dressed, so he could have shown up wearing just about anything he wanted without her being the wiser. In fact, since she didn't know what he looked like, and because she arrived a few minutes before he texted, she was left puzzling over how to find him at all.

Old Harriet would have drifted awkwardly and forlornly, unable to bring herself to speak to strangers to hazard a guess. New Harriet decided to do the exact opposite in order to show her former self what for, and set about querying every young adult male she could find about whether or not they were Travis.

She was so dedicated to this adventure in human interaction that she missed his text, and eventually found him the long way.

"Hello there! Are you Travis from the internet?"

Tyrus looked at her, moderately surprised. He was a little familiar with Old Harriet from the logs that Travis saved of their various conversations (and he briefly wondered if that was weird of Travis to save all of those conversations), enough to have an expectation of what she might be like. The cheerful query wasn't quite what to expect, but she was also the Khshathra. He knew it had changed her -- and, a little weirdly, never really knew the old one -- so it was easy to adjust.

He flashed a smile at her. "Yeah," Tyrus said with a heavy New York accent that he had been practicing, "that's my name. Harriet, right? I was kinda lookin' for Gardenia to come walking up."

He tried watching that anime. Hopefully, she wouldn't want to talk about it extensively, because he thought it was a little boring and fell asleep. He had no idea if Travis liked it or not. Tyrus grinned; some of the nervousness wasn't feigned, and he rolled back and forth on his heels.

"Oh, yeah, nope. Sorry." She did not, strangely enough, pick up on the resemblance to his character that he'd mentioned in the text she hadn't read. Harriet had always had trouble extrapolating based on the models what actual people might look like, and short blonde hair wasn't much of a parallel, considering earth hair only came in about four colors total, and short hair was ubiquitous on guys.

She actually didn't know what to say from here. Fortunately, that sort of thing no longer presented a problem for her.

"So now we are interacting in reality! That's cool right?"

The irony, of course, was that Travis was a little heavier than Tyrus was. He claimed he had lost some weight.

"Yeah, it is!" he said. It was cool, sort of. He was talking to someone who controlled one of the people that he knew, even if his friendship with Nova had never been the deepest. He still had clear memories of the other alchemist. It made him wonder what changed. He grinned and looked around, before he pointed with a finger. "There's apparently a bunch of local musicians and jugglers and crap over that way. You want to check it out?"

"I like musicians and jugglers and crap," she said, before starting off with him. It was a pleasant, scenic little area. She'd never been before without her parents, due to her general policy of not doing anything.

Was it too scenic? What if they were on some kind of blind internet acquaintance date and she had been too oblivious of social norms to notice? Or worse, what if they weren't and it was fine but he somehow sensed her wondering that and she had to jump into the river to escape the humiliation? New Harriet shouldn't have to silently put up with that ambiguity!

But even New Harriet wasn't brave enough (or dumb enough) to admit that she had gone down that route of speculation.

But no. She could reason this out. If she could randomly meet Heimduncan and ride his motorcycle without it being some kind of weird romantic thing, she could definitely walk adjacent to a river with a dude without it being some kind of weird romantic thing.

Yes. Done. Not a secret date.

Conversation was still a thing she needed to attend to.

"So what have you been doing now that there's no more RP?"

Killing my player and taking his place, Tyrus thought. He was, suffice to say, not even remotely considering this could be construed as a date. He couldn't date the Khshathra. She had the brain of Xumurdad. She was his guild leader. She was a friend of someone he murdered. It was so wrong that t never crossed his mind.

He shrugged his shoulders, instead, and started strolling.

"Oh, y'know," he said. "I was gonna take a vacation from the internet, but that didn't work out so well! I got hit by a fuckin' car, so it was kinda like the opposite of takin' a vacation!" he asked, turning his head to grin at her. He kept walking along, down by the waterfront. This was crazy, he thought. No one in Zenderael did this; shorelines were usually quiet, because the sea life was rather ornery. He looked ahead, eyeing the hot dog stands. "I guess mostly..."

He thought about it for a second. He wanted to keep it honest, a little. "Readin'. And watchin' stuff. I kinda miss Zenderael, sometimes, though. Y'know?"

She made a face at the mention of the car accident; it was meant as a sympathetic face, but she had never been great at external displays of appropriate empathetic reactions and was still very new at trying to improve them, so it looked more like an ate-a-lemon face. She was a little glad when he moved on.

"Yeah," she agreed. "There's a part of me that sort of compartmentalized all the new weird stuff, the characters-being-alive stuff, and misses playing and thinking about them as fictional without it being weird and guilty and morally wrong."

She paused. "That part is smaller now that I'm new and weird too, though. Roleplaying was Old Me's thing."

"Yeah," Tyrus said. He faked the sympathy; he really couldn't miss it. It all hit a little too close to home, even if he liked a little bit of storytelling and making things up in his day. Still, he could be sympathetic about missing home. He missed the Zenderael he left behind. Earth was amazing, though, and it was a release from some of his problems. It was easy to feel conflicted.

"Do you think New You would ever do it?" he said. He skipped a beat, then added, "Let's leave aside the moral problem with it, just whether it's mentally interesting."

She shook her head. "It's interesting, but there's too much other stuff out there that I haven't already been doing for years. Pretty much anything else is newer and excitinger. I'd rather build cool stuff or learn a new skill than play in a pretend world. Or a... real pretend world."

It felt a little strange to be saying that, like turning on herself. But she had always wanted to break free on some level, to be too interesting to have to imagine being a more interesting person in a more interesting world. She wondered a little if it was really true that it no longer held any appeal, though.

"Guess it's kinda like taking the red pill," he said. He looked up at that, to hide a frown. He tried to watch as many of Travis's movies, read as many of his books, and play as many of his games as he could. He still didn't recognize that quote and he worried that some day, it could give him away. "You're not really gonna see things quite the same after all of this. I kinda get what you mean, though."

He looked sideways at her. He was walking towards the distant hot dog stand, still. Travis liked hot dogs and Tyrus had to admit they were pretty tasty.

"Do you like bein' one?" He meant an alchemist -- or specifically the Khshathra -- but it seemed unwise to to say that aloud. "I still can't believe you're..." That an Earther is, albeit unknowingly, his guild leader. "...y'know. It's kinda cool, though. If I had to pick a guild, I'd probably become an alchemist."

"Actually, I wanted to do magic," she sighed. "But I'll certainly settle on having a superbrain that spits out zillions of ideas and makes me good at stuff I never could have learned before."

He grinned at her. "I just liked the guns. Decisions made when I was young and impressionable, huh?" he asked, with a shrug. "I'm kinda impressed, though. You build anything really cool?"

"I brought my mom's minivan to life," she offered proudly. "As a construct."

It was parked near the riverwalk...

For a few seconds, Tyrus's face screwed up. WHAT THE HELL WAS A MINIVAN.

He had no idea! He never heard of that before! Was it some sort of animal native to Earth? He saw the really long-necked ones on the forum. He shook his head and laughed, sounding a little forced, but only a little forced. "More than meets the eye, huh!" he said. "What's it look like?"

The grimace, Harriet assumed, was merely awe and disbelief at the idea of a zombie van. That was okay. Who wouldn't be dumbfounded?

"Like a scorpion," she answered. "I had lots of scorpion...parts... after I rammed one."

For a split second, Tyrus thought Earth made machines that resembled scorpions, which he found frightening and alarming. Then, Harriet added an explanation that explained it while still leaving him wondering what the hell a minivan was.

"No shit!" he said, turning to look at her. He grinned brightly and genuinely. It was pretty amazing, he thought. "And you incorporated scorpion parts into your construct? That's fuckin' crazy, Harriet! Does it stand out, though? Compared to all the other, uh, minivans."

She barked a laugh. "Yes, yes it does. It's only PART scorpion, otherwise I'd be worried about people shooting at it thinking it was a monster. I guess they still might, but I think it's mostly obvious it's a vehicle. I mean who's ever seen a scorpion with windows? But I did get pulled over just on merit of it being fucking weird."

Diplomatic immunity sure came in handy.

Some sort of vehicle, then! Good to know. Maybe it looked like one of the Earth cars.

"I wish I could take it for a spin." Tyrus grinned at her, tilting his head to the side as he walked next to her. "I never liked driving, though."

"Me either," Harriet replied, in a jokingly somber tone. "That's why I had to bring my car to life. Now it drives itself."

She was quite satisfied with having knocked out another of Old Harriet's limitations, if in a roundabout way.

Tyrus grinned. "Get the fuck out," he said. "You gotta show me this sometime. You just tell it where to go and it goes?"

"I brought it! I can show you before we leave! It is the most intelligent of minivans."

A construct would never have an intellect or level of self awareness approaching human, but much like robots, you could teach them surprisingly complex sets of behaviors. And self preservation instinct went a long way, too -- it wasn't going to blindly ram up against other cars and smash its own nose in. Sometimes it got confused at four-way stops and nervous about merging, but then again, so did everyone.

"I gotta see this," he said. He had made constructs, of course; he actually supplemented his income by sending some out by mail-order. He was working on learning how to program, so he could make a mail-order alchemy business. None, however, were quite like that. It was a shame, in a way; he couldn't show her what he made without giving himself away.

They were getting close to the hot dog stand. "Hey, you want a hot dog? I think I'm gonna get one. Uh, if that's cool."

"Sure!" she said, a moment before realizing she didn't know if he'd asked because he intended to order for both of them, which would be hella awkward and open up all sorts of weird date-esque vibes all over again except since it wasn't a date was she then going to pay him back? And if so, did he have change?

She puffed out her cheeks as if the tension hot-dog quandary was building within her. WHAT TO DO?

This was certainly an appropriate use of a godbrain if she'd ever known one. THINK FAST HARRIET.

Aha!

"You go ahead and order yours first, I'll need a while to contemplate toppings."

...In retrospect, she couldn't believe she needed to be a demigod to handle this situation.

"Yeah, don't sweat it!" Tyrus said. He walked up to the stand and lifted a finger up, opening his mouth ready to order.

"I'll have a--"

Then, a monstrous roar filled the air. People started screaming, as an enormous serpentine head snaked downward and opened its fanged jaws. It bit into the hot dog stand, lifted it up into the air, and choped down. Th monster swallowed, as its dinosaur-like body swam up the distance of the river. The hot dog stand's operator screamed and turned around, bolting away, as did everyone else. Tyrus stared at his back, where the hot dog stand had been, and then out into the river.

A Zenderean sea monster had swam up the river. It was presently eating the hot dog stand. His jaw opened up and he stared at it blankly.

"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

Harriet watched the creature chewing on the hotdog stand, her mouth gaping open. It was a while before she turned to Travis.

"You know I don't get your classic movie references, right? Like 99% of what I watch is anime."

Fuck you, Travis, Tyrus thought, not for the first time.

He looked at her and grinned sheepishly. "I'm pretty sure that our respective tastes in entertainment are something to discuss after we kill a dinosaur?"

"We're" going to kill it?" she asked, a bit squeakily. "Not some monster hunters or something?"

Shit. Tyrus had forgotten his role for a moment; he wasn't an alchemist and a criminal, who could stand up to a monster without blinking. He was Travis Handley, who by all rights, should be frightened out of his skull.

Except Travis Handley took a sharp blow to the head. Then he took sixteen more while Tyrus screamed at him and slammed his temple into a desk over and over, for taking his brother away from him. He could never take that murder back, but being a coward because it fit was spitting on that poor kid's memory. His expression hardened as he looked up at it, then he reached into his coat. He pulled out a pistol and cocked it back once.

"Technically, I guess, you are," he said. He pointed at a food stand, some distance away. It looked like it sold Italian sausage and pepper sandwiches. "Can you turn that into a bomb? It's probably got a lot of heating elements and crap, so..."

The sea monster wheeled its head around, before it struck down again. It picked up a falafel stand, this time, and bit into it. It cracked in half, delicious and exotic ingredients raining down onto terrified people fleeing below.

"You want me to turn a sausage stand into a bomb," she said. She gave him a flat, incredulous look, the effect of which was ruined when it turned starry-eyed, the sausage stand literally pulling her gaze away as she started to contemplate the possibilities.

Diffusing bombs had been such fun. But she'd never made one...

"You're going to have to distract the shit out of that thing."

"Done," Tyrus said. "Do it to it! Shout when you've got the thing wired up!"

He decided to not give her a chance to back out. The Khshathra could do that, right? That way, he could do his part without giving away his guild affiliation. Tyrus started running, shooting his pistol at the sea monster. The bullet struck its side, bouncing off a scale. The thing turned, as Tyrus bolted towards a stand some distance away from the sausage one indicated.

It looked like it sold sushi.

Harriet hurried toward the sausage stand, and set herself to the task of disassembling the cooking equipment so she could make something out of it that would go KABOOM. This wasn't precisely intuitive, given the earth materials she had to work with, so she spent some time on her phone inputting search terms that were likely to get her put on some kind of list.

It would be a bit before she was ready to start working in earnest. Good luck, Travis!

Tyrus did a serpentine run that was altogether surprisingly well-trained for someone of Travis's skill and background. He also fired a few shots up at the sea monster, but the bullets did not do much against it. As he got closer to the sushi stand, the sea monster snapped its jaws down and ate up that food stand too.

He kept running, towards yet another one, with a look at Harriet. He could keep this up for awhile, but not forever.

Now, now, Travis, bomb-making was a delicate art -- literally, since if she jostled this sucker too much, it was likely to blow.

She had exploited the ingredients of some potions she'd been carrying for volatility, while using the propane from the food stand's grill as fuel. Only a makeshift structure separating the various elements -- flimsy by design -- kept it from exploding in her hands. It would, ideally, collapse on contact with the water when she dropped it in.

She shuffled quickly but carefully toward Travis and the monster with the bomb in her arms, her expression a strange mix of "Holy fuck what am I doing" and "Look what I did isn't it beautiful?"

Tyrus kept running. He was starting to panic a little after two more food carts went down. He was running out of them and bullets were doing nothing to the serpentine monster. He noticed Harriet moving and realized he had to keep the beast from noticing, before it tried to gobble up the Khshathra whole. That would have ended poorly.

He bolted towards the next food cart. The sea monster snaked its head down, as Tyrus got a good look at it: it was a Burger King stand. The sea monster's huge, draconic nose worked with rapid sniffs, and then it stopped about three feet away from the food cart. The monster turned its head and looked at Tyrus. Then it opened its mouth and roared, wind blowing back from the creature's mouth, shooting Tyrus's hair back. It looked displeased with the scent of greasy Whoppers.

"Oh, come on!" Tyrus groaned at the sea monster. "You can have it your way!"

He looked at Harriet, panic mounting. Now would be a fantastic time to make a big explosion, in his opinion!

Unfortunately, this required getting close to the water -- and to the monster, by extension. It wasn't a prospect she relished, and she slowed as she approached the monster from behind, reluctant to actually get near the thing.

To convince herself, she focused on how unpleasant and dangerous it was to be CARRYING A BOMB and how it was definitely going to explode in her arms if she didn't get rid of it as soon as possible. She scurried to the river's edge, released it, and then turned on a heel and ran in the opposite direction the moment it left her arms. She didn't make it far before it collided, but she was counting on the structure of the bulkhead and the distance down to the water to help keep them from being caught in the explosion.

The explosion rattled the ground beneath their feet.

The blast sent a huge burst of water into the air. The spray rained down on the entire riverfront area. It soaked through Tyrus's clothes. The head of the sea monster slammed into the ground, rattling the earth again, and down the length of its neck, it was clear the head had been severed. Blood was pooling along the riverfront. Tyrus made a face at that, before he looked towards the waterfront again.

It looked like Harriet was unharmed. He walked over towards her, his feet squishing in his shoes. He looked down at her. His head tilted to the side and he made a confused face.

"Hey. Maybe we should get sushi instead of hot dogs?" Then he grinned, because he was being a wise guy.

The rumble of the explosion shook her balance, and the spray of water and monster parts startled her enough to finish it off -- she stumbled and fell, scraping her hands a little on the ground when she caught herself, but barely feeling it in the surprise of the moment.

When Travis approached her to make his quip, Harriet was sitting in a puddle -- of water, not blood, thankfully, though the blood was creeping closer. She pointed at the monster's head with her mouth gaping open and looked at him.

"Its head came off!"

A beat later:

"I bet we can salvage components!"

"Oh, yeah, I bet we could," Tyrus said. He paused after that. Travis was in that class; it wasn't too weird to agree readily to that. He looked at the head thoughtfully. The scales would probably be useful, he thought. They could make parts for a construct. Maybe some of the organs inside of the skull, not to mention the teeth. Still, it would be rather messy work.

"You want to?" he asked. "We could try chopping it up, I guess. I don't exactly have a hacksaw on me, though."

"Yeah, me either..." It was kind of a gruesome thought -- using scorpion parts had been kind of gross, too, but it was enough like a bug to minimize the horror factor of disassembling its body.

"Maybe the next severed monster head," she said, strangely disappointed She had barely closed her mouth before she added, "Although I do have a hunting knife."

Nobody wanted to tangle with sea monsters, so the parts had to be worth a lot. Although maybe not in Fall City, where they were probably getting taken down like this pretty regularly.

"I don't mind lugging around sea serpent scales," he said. He shrugged his shoulders, looking back at the monster. He should have thought to start bringing a knife with him. Monster attacks were common enough that it seemed worthwhile to be able to collect parts. "Your construct can probably fit some stuff."

Chances are, it would ruin his clothing, though. Sigh!

That comment got a curious glance -- the minivan could definitely hold as much as they could comfortably carry -- it was a minivan. But she was distracted by the prospect of attempting some amateur monster carving. Was it too late to enroll in that meat science course? It seemed like a skill she was going to need moving forward...

"Yeah, we can stow it in my van. Do you mind if I hoard it all and then pay you back your share in potions?"

Unless he was in love with the idea of selling monster parts in Bastantown, she figured she could make more efficient use of it herself. ...What a weird thought that was.

In potions? He could make potions himself! Something... she had no idea of.

He grinned at her, hands sliding into his pants pockets, and shrugged his shoulders thoughtfully. "Can't say no to that. I hope you can make a clothes drying potion." He looked at the monster. "I hate getting these things all wet like this." He turned on a foot and started walking towards it.

"Guess it's a chance to put that 'meat science' course to proper use!"

"Oh, you're in it? Good!" She pushed herself up from the ground, unhappy to discover the scrapes she'd acquired earlier. That didn't keep her from rummaging in her bag, though. She produced her knife, grinning in a way that was maybe a tiny bit scary.

"Because I've got no idea what I'm doing!"

Tyrus looked her up and down, before he grinned back. The scary-looking grin was, he decided, kind of awesome. He liked this Khshathra. It was a shame his entire life was a lie and she probably would hate him if she found the truth out.

"Don't worry." He looked back at the monster, then turned his head, brown eyes lit up with excitement. "I stayed in a Holiday Inn last night."