ohmyarceus | JULY - AUGUST TEST DRIVE MEME

[In contrast, Dimitri pauses right outside the Pokecenter and wildly shakes his head to free his hair of most of its wetness. He grinds his feet against the mat outside, and takes care to hang his cloak somewhere so that it can drip clean. The cloak is just a matter of good care, something he's had to keep in mind a lot when it was just him on his own in Faerghus. He has so little... so what he did have, he had to make sure it lasted.]

[But the hair, the boots? That's because.... At this point, he's run into at least a couple of Nurse Joys, now. They tend to his Tepig when they've had to fight their way free, and they give him that strange device whenever he accidentally breaks one. Additionally, they fuss over him, sometimes. They worry at the lack of sleep he shows, his general sorry state.]

[....He thinks of Mercedes, sometimes, when they act like that. Mercedes who hadn't known what to do with the war either, who had felt the church did so much good that she wanted to carry on. Mercedes, who had weathered his snarling and snapping so that she could at least be sure he was in good health when they reunited after so long. The Nurse Joys are similar, calmly dealing with all manner of beasts and monsters and people.]

[He is also a beast, one that was finally put down after so long... but he won't make their work any harder than it needs to be. Not when he thinks of Mercedes, and hopes she is finding better than some monster of a would-be king.]

[That's the only extent he offers, however, slouching over to the other chair in wet clothing that sticks to him. Dean sits calmly on his lap in turn, seeming to recuperate now that they're out of the rain. Dimitri stares down at him for a moment, and is belated in answering Noa's question.]

...There is no other explanation for such a creature.

[Noa quirks an eyebrow, the most change her expression's seen this whole conversation. It doesn't slow her folding the cloak up, though, and setting it—mud and all—in her lap. The next cape laces down the front, more clumsily than her captain would truss it up for her at home, and she pulls at the knots with one hand.]

I think it's just a somewhat strange pig.

[Like? There's definitely some other way to explain its existence??????]

[No, he thinks he's pretty sure he's nailed the only explanation ever, Noa.]

In any other life, perhaps. And yet we all arrive here, with no understanding how, and with a creature already matched to our sides.

We are dead. They match us as mirror images.

[Dean just settles in Dimitri's lap, with the tired expression of a pig who has heard a lot of this all before.]

What do you know of that particular breed of creature that accompanies you?

[Congratulations, Dimitri, you've gotten one entire obvious bafflement out of Noa's face. A rare occasion, not because she's infrequently confused but because she infrequently deigns to show it.]

We're obviously not dead.

[bruh?? bruh?????????]

She doesn't like to be touched and her favorite food is the blue berries and she likes to be dirty.

[Those are more facts about Violet than facts about the breed, so she adds, casually:] She's very strong, and I'm told when she gets big she'll give her prey hugs so its spine will shatter.

[COOL STUFFUL FACTS]

Edited (changed some pronouns for clarity SORRY TO DO THIS HOURS AFTER THE FACT) 2020-08-31 18:58 (UTC)

[Oh cool, him and the not-a-stuffed bear have something in common - but more importantly: ]

You do not know that you are dead. That we are dead.

Yet that is a common thing of the deceased: to either not know the nature of their own existence, or to be so engulfed in regret and rage that they torment the living over it.

[Dimitri is obviously neither of those things... but he feels this must be a purgatory of a kind for him. A strange sort of - punishment, maybe? A task he must complete in his afterlife? He cannot be certain, yet. He feels aimless, confused... but, in a strange way, grateful as well.]

[His parents, and Glenn, and so many servants and knights... They haunted him for so many years, tore at his sleep and never let him forget their deaths. That he is not like that, not tormenting Felix, or Ingrid, or Sylvain, or Dedue... He knows he was never what any of them deserved, so he is grateful that he no longer makes their lives worse.]

For example... Do you find some similarity with Violet, then? In an appealing appearance, or in strength, or in her distaste for touch?

The lattermost, I suppose, but I am not strong enough to snap anything's spine.

[Stronger here, where she can run farther before her breath gets past her and she has to stop and sit and catch it—maybe it's all the fresh air. She can't just expect that she isn't sick anymore, because proving it means using her powers, and probably gone isn’t good enough to risk a test.

Violet, as Noa speaks, acquiesces to some contact as Noa holds out her unlaced cape. With a little harrumph, Violet steps forward and Noa uses it to clean off the worst of the mud. The next layer, Violet steps into when Noa undoes it and sets it out, and Noa bundles her up like a little pink present, too. All this leaves is her dress and fabric tied around her arm with one clumsily done bow after another. Noa starts pulling at the ribbons with her teeth.]

I am quite sure I'd remember dying, though, and if I could torment the living I would be doing that instead of playing in the mud.

[BOY would it be funny to ghost-harass her family!!!]

[Dimitri is also strong enough to snap anything's spine, or at least he was. He's strong, here, but it doesn't seem as strong.... Is this what they mean when they say the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak?]

[...He suspects he's gotten that mixed up somehow.]

[Slumping in his seat, posture atrocious, Dimitri lets out a slow breath.]

That is not true... Not necessarily. Death, and pain... are miserable things. We might forget.

And in my experience... The living you torment are often the ones you love the most.

[Mouth full of ribbon, Noa doesn't answer right away. When she pulls apart the last she pulls off the wrappings around her arm, too, and the glove, and there it is: metal and bulky and creaking as she extends it out in front of her and grinding as she flexes the joints at her elbow and wrist and finger to make sure everything feels as it ought to instead of gummed up by the rain.]

I very nearly died once, [she says and sounds no different than she has this whole conversation, musing and unfocused,] and I remember it very well. I think I would remember if the job were finished.

Also, it seems terribly unfair that I don't have an arm and you don't have an eye if we're dead. Also, I checked and I still have a pulse, though I suppose I shouldn't assume you do as well. Also, if that is the case, maybe you should be nicer to your friends.

[swing and a miss you horrible child]

So have I.

[you're not special, Noa, how the hell do you think he lost this eye-]

[SPEAKING OF WHICH]

The Goddess is cruel. I expect no fairness from Her on this front, even if our suffering should be done with once we have died. After all, it is suffering that drives the regretful dead to torment the living, to convince them to take up their cause again.

There is no doubt that my friends and allies all deserved better... Yet even if I could be anything better than I was, it would not have changed anything.

That is how the dead are.

[Dean starts to shove his head under one of Dimitri's hands, ruffling up his little hood a bit, and Dimitri pauses, running his hand along the little pig's head in a way that almost seems to be avoiding any actual contact.]

...Besides, we are dead, not corpses. Pulses have no relevance.

[Noa folds both hands in her lap, and the soft grinding of her metal arm's parts stills with her. Her flesh fingers run over the other hand's metal joints. She's quiet for a long moment, contemplating this. She could say much about goddesses and lack thereof, of regret and suffering and their absence, things that would not help if she were even trying to. Certainly, though, she hasn't died. Not scurrying down cobbled market streets, certainly not without remembering a moment of it. Dimitri can be a ghost all he wants, she supposes, but she's not about to get dragged into it.]

I think, [she finally decides on, in an airy, casual sort of way,] you are probably just crazy.

[HORRIBLE BASTARD CHILD]

[ok you know what, frick you too lady]

So you find it a normal thing, to suddenly appear in a stranger's house as she claims kinship with you while a creature that bears similarities to you or your life stays eternally by your side?

I don't think it is normal, but I am not convinced it is a sure sign that death has taken us all and there is simply no other possible answer.

It is the only answer that makes any sense. Or do you have a better theory?

[She shrugs. The shoulder piece of her arm clicks when she does.]

I do not know much about magic except that it is a predatory thing. I think maybe there is someone or something that is either very rude or very bored. Maybe the latter, since this place is not so terrible. [She watches Violet, who has rolled onto her back and is presently wriggling about inside the bundled-up cape, as she says so.] But that answer asks too many questions to be the only one.

[....Huh. That's an interesting theory. Or something. Dimitri eyes Noa for a moment.]

...Magic is just magic. As a weapon is just a weapon. But the only thing that could make a place like this happen would be the Goddess.... and I do not think She cares enough about humans to make a place such as this.

Magic is a parasite.

[She says that a little more firmly than most of her wispy, matter-of-fact statements—but she isn't willing to test it any further, and so she settles and returns to her soft spoken musing.]

And that's another thing. I don't know anything about a Goddess. There are stories about some of them, more than one, and gods and other things people say are divine, but they're just stories. I don't think people with and without your goddess would share their afterlife.

[Wow, that sure is some particular venom he's not going to investigate. Frankly, Dimitri finds it none of his business.... and there's something more interesting to talk about instead.]

I don't see why not.... The dead are the dead, no matter who they worshiped or did not worship when they were living.

All plants grow in the soil. All fish swim in the ocean. Why not have the dead go through similar afterlives?

Then a great many people were wrong about their afterlife stories. Although, most of them were bound to be.

I think it is more likely you simply have never heard of the thing responsible for us being here the same way I have never heard of your goddess and neither of us likely ever heard of a thing called a Pokémon before we saw this place.

The difference there is that the world is wide, and many people have not heard of her.

[Not in Fodlan, but plenty of other places, he's sure.]

These creatures are different... and so is our being here.

And is the world not so wide that there could be some great magic force powerful enough to do something like this place and our presence without you having heard of it?

The same could be said of you and the Goddess.

I think that sort of thing is all bunk, anyway.

But if you agree that's the case then it proves there are other possibilities than all of us being dead and that's all there is to it.

I watched my professor be dragged into an alternate realm and re-emerge with the mark of the Goddess upon them which allowed them to wield a holy artifact.

[....so]

[.........]

Proof that the living can be stolen from their homes and giving things which match them, too.

[noa that's not the POINT]

[So two feral idiots walk into a Pokecenter-]

So you concede that the Goddess is real.

[how did we get here. he's not even really that ~~catholic~~ religious]

JULY - AUGUST TEST DRIVE MEME

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byleth just got a dye job, dimitri, it's ok

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