hugtopia_logs | it's been the ruin of many a poor boy [open.]

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it's been the ruin of many a poor boy [open.]

♥ Who: Clifford Norman, OTA!
♥ Where: wherever tbh...
♥ When: August 1 and general early August.
♥ What: Cliff arrives to do typical intro log stuff and be frustrated.
♥ Rating: uhh PG-13 for language? and probably underage smoking at some point.

[ a. the wrong world. ]

[He’d had the plan to move out solidly in mind until recently, but…somehow this wasn’t quite what he’d pictured. After being led to housing by the welcome wagon, Cliff had waited out the helpful robot before slinking away from the open street to somewhere he can quietly freak the fuck out in peace. Even in the alternate reality he suddenly had a second life’s worth of memories of, he’d only heard stories about some corrupted-but-harmless AI, nothing like a whole society….not that that’s his biggest issue right now. He doesn’t know nearly enough about science or magic to figure out why the hell he remembered two versions of his life or why he was a wolfboy from the middle of nowhere with shitty father figures in both of them. That just doesn’t seem fair?

He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair, shakes his head like it will disperse those thoughts, and sets off again. Maybe if he got the lay of the land, he'd have an easier time getting a handle on things. At least he can feel being an Animal Person, and know that if he wanted to right now, he could be a wolf before his next step hit, and that’s knowing more than nothing! Along that thought, he was wearing Oscar’s hoodie and he had that bag of gummies he'd just started. Undeniably real. But the hoodie had existed in that other world, too, even though he'd never gotten tangled with “just some guy” that was a magnet for trouble. And…]

Huh. Well, that was the most unbelievable part of all that.

[In his pocket, the push of his finger against a figurine’s ear assures him that it is also pretty damn real. Didn’t hate that, no matter how confusing it is. The circumstances surrounding this place and that other one, though...]

Christ. You save a guy’s life a couple times and they want to upgrade you to saving two worlds?

[Because he didn't have enough of a headache.]

[ b. the wrong foot. ]

[Contemplating his newly realized existential crisis, he doesn't have the mental fortitude to figure out who’s in charge and kick their ass. Instead, the redhead resigns himself to pretend-scrolling through his not-an-earth-phone while his eyes -- more animal than human, if someone were to inspect them -- and scowl do the job of telegraphing his mood for him even from where he's hiding under his hood.

It could be that simple, just his glare accidentally finding someone who didn't deserve it and a miscommunication running wild from there, or it could be that while he's pretending to be distracted by his phone, he's actually distracted with his thoughts enough that he comes too close to someone passing the other way and bumps into them. He jolts back with tight fists and an arm lifted like a shield between himself and the stranger. As ready to fight as he might seem and sound, it's possible to notice that he's on guard rather than being aggressive.]

Hey, watch it -- !

[ c. the wrong attitude. ]

This sucks.

[Cliff plops onto the bench with a truly impressive sigh. That feeling before he’d woken up… Even with as much as he loves his mom and brother, the fact that he still had to hold a part of himself back means that it had been so completely, overwhelmingly alien. Comforting and safe in the moment, but now?]

Fucking tired of people messing with my head…

[This really, really sucks.

Miserably, he notes that he should be rationing the few supplies that had come with him, but he deserves the sugar, dammit! Cliff drags the bag of gummi bears out and starts to eat them with the enthusiasm of a man on death row. He starts each one by biting its head off.]

[ d. the wrong...card?! ]

[idk man it’s the wildcard option, hit me up if you want to work something out!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[You can still eat the watermelon guts after you smash it... It's one of the cooler things about watermelon, in the opinion of a guy that doesn't know shit about watermelon, like Cliff.]

Jeez. Sounds miserable. Yo, you want a gummi bear?

[Sir that was your survival sugar.]

... Sure. I'm cool with candy from strangers.

[He has access to watermelon, now. He can spare a bear or two for someone coming off as pretty decent? Cliff unrolls the bag again, grabs one for himself, and then poises the bag in a way that's waiting for Kaito's hand to be ready to catch what he shakes out.]

I don't think it counts as suspicious behavior when it's coming from a minor. You got a name or something, watermelon guy?

[Sorry, Shinji. He'd stolen your watermelon reputation.]

Minors can still get arrested, kid.

[Says the guy fresh out of a confusing timewarp out of juvie. Here's his hand, ready to Receive Bear.]

Thanks tho. It's Kaito. What about you, gummy bear boy?

[Shinji can probably be watermelon guy #2.]

Tch, you sound like the dick my mom married. I'm confident in my ability to evade the cops.

[He'd been so close to a 100% full escape rate, not even a face put to his harmless crimes... Stupid Micah, getting seen wandering into the woods, and stupid him for not being more careful.

Bear: delivered. Like three of them, on account of the imprecise science of candy bag shaking.]

Cliff. [His own gummi loses its head to the guillotine that is his teeth. It's mostly just habit, by this point.] So are the laws here as ass-backwards as their plan to save the world, or what?

[Thank you for this Bear Bounty. The motion of escorting the treats back to his side of the bench was a good thing to focus on to force his frown into a neutral line. Didn't like that comparison there. Didn't like that one bit. (Even if it was a fair conclusion to draw from that line alone.)]

I mean as long as you're not jumpkicking a cop, I'm sure your evasion is fine. Don't follow my exemplary minor behavior.

[Gonna shove this bear in his mouth. Gonna have a moment because oh wow this thing really is just 100% sugar huh???]

...Things are pretty lax for the most part? At least, they were. Usually folks only got in trouble cuz they were trying to get through the wall without any protection. Some other ones just tried some breaking and entering, which... y'know. Authorities don't tend to like on most worlds. So the natives are a bit jumpier than they were.

[Jumpkicking a cop… He imagines it for a moment, but the local officers weren't too terrible, just annoying that they showed up when he and his friends were messing around. Nah, with a soft laugh, he decides he’ll stick to kicking monsters in the face, for now. Enjoy the sugar. The sugar mixed with sugar and more sugar.]

Huh. Anything good from the B&E? Was it for stuff?

[like...what was the focus… was it just someone wanting to hang out in a crappy abandoned shack in the proverbial woods since nothing grew, or a stealing confidential files kind of thing.]

[The cops around Iruma were usually alright enough too, even with some delinquent like him. Still, shit hitting the fan called for desperate measures sometimes. At least it made for a laugh.]

Maybe? It's a hard 50/50 on if people were just stir crazy or if they actually had a reason to suspect something nasty. Not that I'd blame them for either thing.

[He shrugged.] They were looking for info I guess. Dunno if they got anything, they decided to just preach at everybody about it.

[He nods with a hum and eats the rest of his bear.]

Yeah, sounds right. Probably both.

[The student files thing was half having fun with a cute girl he wanted to impress and half wanting to help her use the files to solve a serious problem. It's nice when you get a good two-for-one deal like that.]

That's shitty they're not just telling us what they found or didn't find, though. How are people supposed to know what they want to do if you don't tell them anything?

Exactly. Like, sure its cool you did what you thought what the right thing was, but did anything come out of it? Don't bust in griping at everyone when you don't have anything to tell us either and act all surprised when people get mad about it. Cool your jets a sec.

[Let's chomp on sugar take two while making an exaggerated shrug.]

They're usually alright guys, but that whole thing looked like it needed some more time before anyone opened their mouth. Maybe we'll find something out later.

[This guy gets it.]

Hope so. Otherwise, what was the point except to make them not trust us?

[Not that Cliff wasn't used to that, and so far things hadn't been too bad. Nothing he can't handle, probably won't even have to worry about it.]

Sounds like you don't mind being here too much.

[Nodnod. Kai wasn't letting himself worry about it much either. If something was up, he'd be all ears, but until then? Nah. This was the first he'd gotten to air out that gripe, so thanks for that, Cliff.]

To be honest, it's been real good for me.

[He smiled a bit, brief but fond. There was a shake of his head.]

But I've got nothin' goin' for me back home, so I rolled with it.

[Hey, complaining is a good, healthy activity as far as Cliff is concerned. He'd be happy to do it again.]

Oh, yeah?

[It's the kind of weary tone of someone who can sympathize, suggesting it's fine to go on or that he'd understand fine if he doesn't want to dwell on it. Sometimes you're in a real shit situation.]

Guessing the boyfriend's from here, then. [...maybe this isn't a Great thing to bring up at a first meeting, but they've already covered arresting minors and starving (sort of.) It's fine.] What if one of you is put in a different world?

Yeah. Had no attachments, and I did the one thing I needed to do. S'fine.

[There wasn't anything cagey about the answer-- Kai didn't have any secrets of his own he wasn't willing to talk about. He just didn't think any of it was interesting enough to bring to the table without any prompting. Getting arrested for trying to help a bud with a new otherwordly identity hide and live as a normal human? A cool and relevant story for another day.

As for the boyfriend:]

He is. If that happens then any god I can get my hands on is gonna feel it 'til I get to follow him.

[It's...grim to imagine having just one thing you needed to do anywhere, to Cliff. To not need to take out the trash, to not need to learn an old card game from a ghost, to not need to sneak out late at night for smokes with your friends, to not need to buy that sequel to a video game you liked, to not need to work out flight plans a few months off... Just dumb, normal stuff. There had been a whole fight to save the world in one set of the memories he had, but as obviously pressing and important as that was, it felt more like a step to get to those other things.

That other answer is more relatable and makes him grin despite it being, well, not a good thing.]

Let me know if you need help, especially if it's the ones here. I've got a few reasons to be pissed at them.

[That was truly the difference in having some semblance of a normal life. At least one good parent, friends that didn't invite him along just to be the scapegoat, no one whispering that you were gonna drag everyone around you down when you were still a child. What a difference even one of those things could have made, but alas. He'd finally found some reasons to be happy though. This was enough for him.

The Kaito that had first gotten here would have taken a lot longer to chuckle, but this one had spent a while learning to be a little more open. He grinned, nodding along. It wasn't a great thing for either of them, but hey.]

I'm sure you do. I'll keep you in mind if I need to tear down a temple.

[Lucky Cliff gets two out of three. Not bad, could be better.]

Sweet.

[Friend potential formed!!! He's feeling pretty good about that, go him, this is very impressive considering he's an unpopular, introverted loser freak with a bad attitude.]

So, are there any other tips and tricks for this place I should know about?

Heh.

[That's an accurate description of his best friend you know. (See also: himself.)]

Guess that depends on what you need. I've been here since the start, so I've probably got a few.

[Maybe that's why it works.]

Since the start? What do you mean?

[He stretched his arms up for a moment before tucking his hands behind his head.]

Lucky batch number one of folks getting plopped into the middle of all this.

[It's almost strange to think of there being a start to any of this, even if he realizes it would be ridiculous to believe otherwise. He'd known Kaito would have had to be around a while to settle down with someone and grow watermelons or whatever, but for him to be one of the first... It makes the situation seem more hopeless, somehow.]

Man. How long ago was that?

Two years.

[Which felt like a long time, spoken out loud. He was sure it was going to sound like an eternity to Cliff, who already seemed real Thrilled to be here in the first place. At the same time... it'd been two years? It hardly felt that long at all.]

Not all of us are still here though. A good chunk have left since then, and not everyone that has shown up since has stuck around for long.

[Two years. It both is and isn't a shock. He'd be an adult by then. Two years in this dead city and all the life they'd managed to bring was to get some watermelons to grow. How much did this place need?]

...They really gave it some time before breaking in, huh?

[Though it sounds like the chances of it being someone from early on were slim.]

Hope they figure out fast that I hate people touching me and shit. Bringing me here was pointless.

[Though going "back" was tricky, when he remembered two different versions of his life that both seemed to be real and didn't know where "back" would be.]

I guess a job will be important... Know anything that would be good for a guy with no experience?

[Kai just shrugged at that first part. The people with the jumpy trigger fingers had really only made it a few months before they decided to run amok. Early folks were more pre-occupied with things like energy balances and figuring out how to safely explore the toxic wasteland that was outside the city, but he really wasn't not the right guy to try and go explaining any of that.

All those other points tho:]

Honestly you'll probably get by just fine. You can get away with not touchin' a majority of the time. No one's gonna force you to do anything, and when touchin' does make things easier you can like... just sit next to somebody?

[Hugs and handholding not required.]

The free housing and stuff's no joke, so don't worry too much. Not sure if any of the offworlder shops are hiring, but there's always odd jobs to pick up with the natives for some extra cash.

[The assurance helps, even if he seems doubtful, still. He nods at the point about the housing -- he hasn't been inside at all, but from what he saw from the outside, it was unbelievable to him that it was free -- and tries to pulled together a list of possibilities while he shifts to sit sideways on the bench, back to the open end and his legs propped up in the middle with his arms on top.]

This count for sitting next to someone? [With a leg barrier between him and the other side of the bench...] Or do you have to be side by side?

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