At this point, Idia has learned not to wear his headphones around lunchtime for this very reason. Sometimes Cater drops by to exchange manga during his break, looking over the books while Idia crams popcorn or an energy drink into his pointy mouth-hole. So Cater doesn't have to wait long before the door slides open, even though Idia hasn't gotten up from his seat at the computer. Ah, magitech is wonderful. Idia doesn't even turn around, eyes fixed on his screens as he idly waves over his shoulder. His fingers are stained orange with cheese curl dust, but at least the hand on his keyboard is clean. He's not that much of a heathen!
Onscreen, there's a flurry of activity in the RTS game Idia's playing, and there's no hesitation as he decimates his opponent while continually munching away on junk food. Only when the "VICTORY!" screen pops up does he half-turn toward Cater. The blue of his lips is partially obscured by orange speckles. "Distro the spoils? Whatcha get?"
Idia making active visual contact with him and using his own mouth to speak, Cater's finding, is incredible progress. It's kind of a bummer that he has to sacrifice prime Magicam photo-op time to put this EXP into their friendship but, hey, he'll take what he can get! Maybe eventually he'll even get Idia to agree to jumping into a selfie or two with him.
"Da-da-da-dun!" Cater slides into the middle of the room presenting his armful of lunch items. "I bring you: an actual real lunch! Seriously, dude, when's the last time you ate anything other than chips and candy? Actually no, don't tell me, I don't want to know. It'll just make my stomach hurt."
Plopping down in the middle of the floor he puts down his spread. "You get first pick between the deluxe chicken sandwich and the loaded egg fried rice." He isn't sure what Idia's tastes are yet outside of processed foods, so he just got two things that he'd eat himself and hoped for the best. "I also got you a lemonade, because I figured you'd want something sweet but I wasn't about to give you more caffeine than you probably already drink."
He got himself an iced coffee though, because he deserves it.
Idia's attention darts between the two offerings for a few seconds before he snatches up the fried rice. Less chewing equals faster eating equals more gaming time. As long as Cater didn't bring sushi, everything's golden. He's not sure he could eat anything if someone sitting near him was shoveling in raw fish. Idia brings the container up to his mouth and starts scooping rice and egg in as fast as he can without choking, pausing once to nod his thanks to Cater.
Well, at least he's eating real food? Like a feral animal, but he's eating. No cam-worthy pics from this gremlin, Cater. Thankfully he's not chewing with his mouth open or smacking his lips, though that might only be out of concern for losing some of his food. Clearly he's more hungry than he let on but can't be assed to get himself a real meal.
Cater is about to tell Idia that there's really no rush...but thinks better of it, not wanting a potential lecture about how there absolutely is because he has to get back to gaming. So instead he looks for a good angle to take a selfie of his own lunch without giving away where he is. A little bit of searching provides a non-descript enough corner that it could be any dorm behind him and he holds up his sandwich to his face with a wink. He'll get the iced coffee after. #lunchtime #NRCcafteriawin #tasty #thanksforthefood #digging in and posted.
Important business out of the way, he's glad to know that it was easy enough to get real food into Idia as he gets started on his own. Between a couple bites he asks, "So for next time, do you have any cafeteria favorites?"
Idia glances up with a muffled "bwuh?" as his mouth is full. Food is food, as long as it's edible and isn't sushi he's fine with it, though of course he has his preference for sweets. He swallows, taking the time to think before finally shrugging. Cater doesn't need to make such a big deal over this. It's crazy enough that he thought to bring lunch in the first place.
"No rank up bonus, so don't sweat it." So even if Cater forgets, Idia still has his stash of snacks. He's lived this long on them.
"Aw, come on," he whines as Idia gives him an all-too-typical answer. "I already did a deep dive for your Magicam account, which btw, tag your uploads better, and there isn't a single food pic on there, so I couldn't get any kind of insight that way." If he wasn't such an expert e-stalker, it could've been easily mistaken for any Ignihyde student's account. The likes were way more telling. "You're just forcing me to bring something new every day until I gauge the best reaction."
Another shrug. "S'fine." And more fried rice shoveled in. He's not really the Magicam type, except for occasional pics of in-progress and finished projects. Tags are a waste of time, too. Anybody following him (hardly anyone) will know what he's posting. He's not a food blogger, dude.
Once the rice is all gone, he scoops up the lemonade and cracks it open, downing half of it in one go. Ah, that bracing sour-sweetness is perfect and puts him in the mood for some citrus sour drops. He digs in a desk drawer, coming up with a tin of candy and popping a grapefruit drop in his mouth. As an afterthought, he holds out the tin to Cater.
Such deflection over preferred food. Cater clicks his tongue but decides to drop it. He'll just make good on his promise and keep showing up unannounced with lunch. It's as good an excuse as any to avoid Trey and the froshes for a little while.
"Oh, thanks!" Without pause, Cater accepts the sweet. He definitely doesn't want it, but it's still surprising anytime Idia offers him anything that he isn't about to let something as trivial as his own preferences get in the way of his precious social ranking. Once it's in his mouth, he makes a show over how sour it is, scrunching up his face. "Aaah, I feel like my whole tongue just woke up!"
He'll swallow it quickly. It's fine. Time for a subject change to get Idia talking!
Idia nods vigorously, pleased, and gestures to his status window. 15-0-0, of course he's stomping all over his competition. "Buncha n00bs. Competition's better on weekends, the casuals go out to party and us dedicated nerds stay home to battle it out." His mouth stretches into a feral, toothy grin better suited to a hungry shark. "Won't change my record, though. Nobody beats me at RTS, I think a thousand moves ahead!"
Cater can see Idia almost vibrating with glee, his eyes bright and slightly manic. It might partially be from energy drinks, though.
"Ha! Yeah, that sounds about right." Don't mind him quickly googling RTS. Cool, okay. Another new gaming term locked and loaded. Watching Idia smile makes his own smile widen, too. His own snaggletooth peeks out, a little quirk of his smile that can't even remotely compare to Idia's. It's easy enough for Cater to look past what's intimidating about it when he's really learning to appreciate Idia showing some well-deserved confidence. "You ever think about joining an e-sports team?"
Slowly, Idia's smile fades a little, teeth vanishing behind his lips and the corners of his mouth leveling out. The mania in his eyes quiets to something sad and regretful.
"Not in the cards for me. I was pre-programmed even before my code went live."
Fate and the Shroud curse and all that. There's no point in fighting it. Hopefully he'll have time to game even after he takes over for good, no more "acting" director of STYX.
Cater falters as he finally sticks a straw into his iced coffee. He can imagine what one is supposed to say here, what some of the other students he knows would say. You can do it if you just set your mind to it, or Nobody can set your future but you! Sounds nice, but idealistic tripe like that doesn't have any real bearing on reality. Why get someone's hopes up when it'll just make their disappointment worse?
No, Idia has the right idea. Better to resign yourself and find your fun where you can. If you keep your expectations low, don't put yourself in a position to be built up, you minimize your hurt.
Cater sips his coffee. "Family stuff, huh? I get that."
"Mm." Idia nods, downing the rest of his lemonade. He doesn't want to think about what he did and almost did in the halls of STYX. Once he graduates, his life will be nothing but the duty of the Shrouds, a gloomy but necessary job.
He switches to a different game, a first-person dungeon crawler better suited for his mood. The shrieks of monsters quickly kill the desire to play, though, and he closes it out. The room goes quiet except for the hum of machines and their breathing.
Cater watches in silence as Idia's attention goes back to his game, games, and then nothing at all. Maybe this is better than pretending that things will get better, but that doesn't make it any less of a bummer.
"There I go, killing the mood again," he finally says with a laugh, trying to find some kind of levity, not wanting to just excuse himself. Not wanting the conversation to get any darker. "Hey, got anything two player?"
"Not your fault," Idia mumbles. He reaches up to poke one of his temples with an orange fingertip. "Malware. Can't get rid of it, baked into the firmware. Can't rip out the parts and start over, either." His hand drops to his lap where the other rests, the fingers of both hands fidgeting.
Two player games, huh? He has a few for the times Ortho wants to join in. A moment's thought and he passes a controller to Cater, plugging it into a port in his computer. A brightly colored bubble popping puzzle game comes up on screen with a few taps on Idia's own controller. "Ever play Bubble Wobble?"
Scooting closer and accepting the controller, Cater purses his lips, stealing glances at Idia as he looks at the screen. "Mm, it looks similar to some mobile games I've seen but in case it's different: is this the kind of game where you connect different colored bubbles and they'll pop anything the same in a chain?"
There are a few different types like this that tend to be pretty popular. They're the kind that seem to have unlimited levels, so you can get sucked in easily when you're killing time. Usually they're chock full of ads, of course. This is an easy thing to talk about on autopilot as he thinks about Malware. Any sort of electronic device can get it, really. The human brain isn't any different. He isn't any different.
But it doesn't really matter, and he's not sure why he's stuck on it.
"Yeah, same thing. Opponent's popped bubbles get pushed down from the top of your screen, hit the bottom and you lose."
He starts the game. Something becomes very apparent in the first fifteen seconds of play: though he could quickly and easily decimate Cater, Idia instead is observing his opponent's skill level and playing to match him. It's not holding back out of pity but rather a genuine desire to have fun with someone else. The Ignihyde housewarden isn't smiling but his expression is calm and focused, without the tension of dark thoughts tugging at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
Cater's no gamer, but once he experiments with the controls during the beginning of the game and gets into a muscle rhythm, it becomes obvious that he's definitely played this type of game before. He's not half bad! As his attention gets more and more pulled in by the game, its difficulty increasing, Cater gets more at ease.
He's sure that there's no way he's winning, but it wouldn't be fun if they didn't have a bit of friendly ribbing, right? Laughing, Cater nudges his leg with one of his feet. "Not nearly as big of a n00b now, am I?"
Idia chuckles lowly, more of a staccato hum than anything. Still, the traces of a grin pull at the corners of his mouth, so Cater can call it a win. Good thing, since it's the only win he's getting on Idia's turf. Those spidery pale fingers flutter on the buttons and the bubbles pop with startling speed, tossing the cast-offs into Cater's screen. Idia's... not holding back anymore. In the space of a few heartbeats, Cater's half grays out and locks.
"Nope. Half-step up to the next pond, from big n00b to small newbie. Good try."
"Aaaah, geeze! No mercy! So cruel!" Even anticipating his defeat, it still throws him for a loop how fast Idia turns up the heat, insane to actually watch those fingers flying. So, maybe he ended up watching how it was done more than trying to (helplessly) defend himself. Even in his shock, though, he's beaming. Small newbie is probably the nicest thing Idia's ever called him (outside of his regular name).
"Hey, I'll take it from the flamer gamer." And then, unable to help it, blurts out, "I can just imagine all sorts of things you could do with hands like that."
The nickname earns Cater an unexpected reward: a startled but genuine cackle of laughter from Idia. "These hands are the ultimate nerd tools. Gaming, building, drafting, if I want to do something, I'm gonna do it."
Wow, this is actually nice. They're playing a game and laughing and teasing each other. Is this what friends do? He does things like this with Ortho but it's different, it's even different from the occasional gaming meet-ups he's had after the STYX incident. He can't explain how it's different, it just is.
Those things are most certainly not what Cater had in mind...but he's not going to clarify out loud! This is probably one of the first times...no, maybe the first time that this hasn't felt weird or tense. Sure, they'd kind of struck up a sort of balance with one another but this was the real deal. He wasn't sure he'd ever really feel like Idia would...seem genuinely happy to have him around.
Guess even the craziest of miracles can happen at Night Raven College. And Cater can officially put able to charm anyone on his list of accomplishments. "Okay, so I know you build, like, everything, but do you ever make your own games?"
Those golden eyes roll. "Duh. You really have to ask?"
A few taps on the keyboard and the dungeon crawler from earlier comes up. "Been working on this one for a few weeks, but I started coding when I was a little nerdling sprout. I could hax0r any system before... before I...."
His fingers twitch on the keys and his eyes go glassy for a moment, staring off into nothing. Then as quickly as it started, the moment passes, Idia shivering and relaxing with a sigh. "... sorry, malware again. Comes and goes, gotta be careful about executable triggers."
Cater stands up on his knees to get a better look at the screen, excited to hear more about the project…when Idia clams up again. What exactly happened that to him? What triggered his Overblot? He shakes his head. “Really, you don’t have to apologize. Like you said, it’s not like you can just do a system wipe or anything.”
It feels like he should say more, even though it also doesn’t feel like his place. “Just take it one day at a time. Everyone has their own pace to deal with these things.” And, is this where he should say that it’s okay to let others help him learn to shoulder the burden? That’s way too personal. “I’m happy as long as you aren’t pushing yourself too hard.”
"I tried." The words are soft, tired. "That's what the Overblot was supposed to do. Wipe it all, restore to factory default." Emptiness, nothingness.
What Cater's saying echoes the things the others told him after they saved him from himself. No one spewed hate or anger at him for what he put them through. Everyone in that room knows that Idia punishes himself worse than anyone ever could.
That last sentence catches his attention, though. He turns his face slightly toward Cater, blinking. "You're... happy? Because of me? But why?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Let's see what Cater has unlocked!
Onscreen, there's a flurry of activity in the RTS game Idia's playing, and there's no hesitation as he decimates his opponent while continually munching away on junk food. Only when the "VICTORY!" screen pops up does he half-turn toward Cater. The blue of his lips is partially obscured by orange speckles. "Distro the spoils? Whatcha get?"
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"Da-da-da-dun!" Cater slides into the middle of the room presenting his armful of lunch items. "I bring you: an actual real lunch! Seriously, dude, when's the last time you ate anything other than chips and candy? Actually no, don't tell me, I don't want to know. It'll just make my stomach hurt."
Plopping down in the middle of the floor he puts down his spread. "You get first pick between the deluxe chicken sandwich and the loaded egg fried rice." He isn't sure what Idia's tastes are yet outside of processed foods, so he just got two things that he'd eat himself and hoped for the best. "I also got you a lemonade, because I figured you'd want something sweet but I wasn't about to give you more caffeine than you probably already drink."
He got himself an iced coffee though, because he deserves it.
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Well, at least he's eating real food? Like a feral animal, but he's eating. No cam-worthy pics from this gremlin, Cater. Thankfully he's not chewing with his mouth open or smacking his lips, though that might only be out of concern for losing some of his food. Clearly he's more hungry than he let on but can't be assed to get himself a real meal.
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Important business out of the way, he's glad to know that it was easy enough to get real food into Idia as he gets started on his own. Between a couple bites he asks, "So for next time, do you have any cafeteria favorites?"
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"No rank up bonus, so don't sweat it." So even if Cater forgets, Idia still has his stash of snacks. He's lived this long on them.
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Once the rice is all gone, he scoops up the lemonade and cracks it open, downing half of it in one go. Ah, that bracing sour-sweetness is perfect and puts him in the mood for some citrus sour drops. He digs in a desk drawer, coming up with a tin of candy and popping a grapefruit drop in his mouth. As an afterthought, he holds out the tin to Cater.
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"Oh, thanks!" Without pause, Cater accepts the sweet. He definitely doesn't want it, but it's still surprising anytime Idia offers him anything that he isn't about to let something as trivial as his own preferences get in the way of his precious social ranking. Once it's in his mouth, he makes a show over how sour it is, scrunching up his face. "Aaah, I feel like my whole tongue just woke up!"
He'll swallow it quickly. It's fine. Time for a subject change to get Idia talking!
"How's your game going today?"
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Cater can see Idia almost vibrating with glee, his eyes bright and slightly manic. It might partially be from energy drinks, though.
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"Not in the cards for me. I was pre-programmed even before my code went live."
Fate and the Shroud curse and all that. There's no point in fighting it. Hopefully he'll have time to game even after he takes over for good, no more "acting" director of STYX.
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Cater falters as he finally sticks a straw into his iced coffee. He can imagine what one is supposed to say here, what some of the other students he knows would say. You can do it if you just set your mind to it, or Nobody can set your future but you! Sounds nice, but idealistic tripe like that doesn't have any real bearing on reality. Why get someone's hopes up when it'll just make their disappointment worse?
No, Idia has the right idea. Better to resign yourself and find your fun where you can. If you keep your expectations low, don't put yourself in a position to be built up, you minimize your hurt.
Cater sips his coffee. "Family stuff, huh? I get that."
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He switches to a different game, a first-person dungeon crawler better suited for his mood. The shrieks of monsters quickly kill the desire to play, though, and he closes it out. The room goes quiet except for the hum of machines and their breathing.
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"There I go, killing the mood again," he finally says with a laugh, trying to find some kind of levity, not wanting to just excuse himself. Not wanting the conversation to get any darker. "Hey, got anything two player?"
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Two player games, huh? He has a few for the times Ortho wants to join in. A moment's thought and he passes a controller to Cater, plugging it into a port in his computer. A brightly colored bubble popping puzzle game comes up on screen with a few taps on Idia's own controller. "Ever play Bubble Wobble?"
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There are a few different types like this that tend to be pretty popular. They're the kind that seem to have unlimited levels, so you can get sucked in easily when you're killing time. Usually they're chock full of ads, of course. This is an easy thing to talk about on autopilot as he thinks about Malware. Any sort of electronic device can get it, really. The human brain isn't any different. He isn't any different.
But it doesn't really matter, and he's not sure why he's stuck on it.
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He starts the game. Something becomes very apparent in the first fifteen seconds of play: though he could quickly and easily decimate Cater, Idia instead is observing his opponent's skill level and playing to match him. It's not holding back out of pity but rather a genuine desire to have fun with someone else. The Ignihyde housewarden isn't smiling but his expression is calm and focused, without the tension of dark thoughts tugging at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
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He's sure that there's no way he's winning, but it wouldn't be fun if they didn't have a bit of friendly ribbing, right? Laughing, Cater nudges his leg with one of his feet. "Not nearly as big of a n00b now, am I?"
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"Nope. Half-step up to the next pond, from big n00b to small newbie. Good try."
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"Hey, I'll take it from the flamer gamer." And then, unable to help it, blurts out, "I can just imagine all sorts of things you could do with hands like that."
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Wow, this is actually nice. They're playing a game and laughing and teasing each other. Is this what friends do? He does things like this with Ortho but it's different, it's even different from the occasional gaming meet-ups he's had after the STYX incident. He can't explain how it's different, it just is.
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Guess even the craziest of miracles can happen at Night Raven College. And Cater can officially put able to charm anyone on his list of accomplishments. "Okay, so I know you build, like, everything, but do you ever make your own games?"
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A few taps on the keyboard and the dungeon crawler from earlier comes up. "Been working on this one for a few weeks, but I started coding when I was a little nerdling sprout. I could hax0r any system before... before I...."
His fingers twitch on the keys and his eyes go glassy for a moment, staring off into nothing. Then as quickly as it started, the moment passes, Idia shivering and relaxing with a sigh. "... sorry, malware again. Comes and goes, gotta be careful about executable triggers."
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It feels like he should say more, even though it also doesn’t feel like his place. “Just take it one day at a time. Everyone has their own pace to deal with these things.” And, is this where he should say that it’s okay to let others help him learn to shoulder the burden? That’s way too personal. “I’m happy as long as you aren’t pushing yourself too hard.”
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What Cater's saying echoes the things the others told him after they saved him from himself. No one spewed hate or anger at him for what he put them through. Everyone in that room knows that Idia punishes himself worse than anyone ever could.
That last sentence catches his attention, though. He turns his face slightly toward Cater, blinking. "You're... happy? Because of me? But why?"
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